


if we could be something

by dollylux



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Background Het, Childhood Friends, Closeted Character, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, First Crush, First Time, First Time Bottoming, Friends With Benefits, Lesbian Sex, Multi, Nipple Piercings, Overprotective, Pining, Road Trips, Suicidal Thoughts, Threesome - F/F/M, true crime references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-07 09:20:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 57,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11620611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: adrianne grew up with her heart wrapped like vines around her best friend, rose. this is the story of them, and how rose eventually got free.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so, this story took over my life. it was something i needed to write, so i just started. it's turned into its own beast, and i've decided to post it in parts. this is the first part. 
> 
> title from 'the nicest thing' by kate nash.
> 
> this story is for every queer girl who's ever loved a straight girl.

**1995**

Adrianne’s always been the tallest girl in class.

There’s one or two boys who stand a couple of inches taller, but she always ends up in the back row for the class picture every year, standing long and unrepentant next to the teacher and Dalton, a boy who promises to be the next Kobe Bryant, and Josh Gibson, the kid who smells bad and eats Pop-Tarts while he watched the kindergarten girls play at recess.

Josh, of course, will grow up to be in gen pop with the other kiddie fuckers who had a video collection back home that he didn’t hide well enough.

But Adrianne, ignorant of her own future and bored in social studies, manages to sit up even taller when the classroom door opens and interrupts Ms. Cooper’s drone about the stupid racists in the Civil War.

In walks Ms. Latham, the guidance counselor, her wrinkled, dry hands resting on the tiny shoulders of a girl Adrianne’s never seen before. And she's definitely gonna be the smallest one in this year's class picture. And next year's.

The whole class falls quiet and stares.

“This is Rose Blake Winslow,” Ms. Latham announces with her warbly voice, frosted pink lips trembling out a smile. “Rose transferred from LaDue, Missouri, and this is her first day here at Burroughs Elementary. Do you want to say hi, Rose?”

“Hi,” comes a small voice from a lowered head, flame-red braided pigtails resting on her shoulders. Adrianne glances around at the class when a few kids snicker.

“Why don’t you tell us your… favorite color, favorite animal, and what you want to be when you grow up?” Ms. Cooper suggests like it’s a brilliant idea and not just prolonged torture. Adrianne grips the edges of her book, tensed for secondhand embarrassment.

Rose shrugs, a quick lift of her shoulders before she tips her head back to look up at Ms. Latham with a pleading expression. Ms. Latham gives her aqua-and-white striped shoulder a gentle pat.

“Go on, dear,” she says softly.

“Pink,” Rose forces out, her hot pink backpack gripped tightly in front of her, “koala, veterinarian.”

“Good,” Ms. Cooper says with a beaming smile, guiding Rose away from a retreating Ms. Latham and nodding at the empty seat beside Adrianne where Jacob McDonald usually sat, but he’s absent today. “Why don’t you have a seat right there in the third row?”

Rose shuffles back to the vacant desk and sinks into the red, plastic seat, falling completely still the second she does, like maybe if she doesn’t move a muscle, everybody will forget about her. Adrianne can’t help but watch her out of the corner of her eye, her pencil gripped tight in her hand, long blonde ponytail shivering down her back as she shifts in her seat. She doesn’t know yet how to look cool, how to play at being unaffected and aloof when she wants someone’s attention.

She’s rewarded for her curiosity when Rose glances over at her after Ms. Cooper gives the girl a textbook and a stapled worksheet, and she feels warm all over when Rose offers her the barest, shyest of smiles.

 _Please be my best friend,_ Adrianne thinks, thumb pressing hard against the dull point of her pencil as she forces her eyes back to the front of the room. _Please, please._

 

At recess, Adrianne usually plays with the boys. 

Currently, they’re engaged in a long, grueling reenactment of the Battle of Helm’s Deep that has lasted the better part of April. They’re back at it for all of five minutes before Adrianne lowers her stick-sword, eyes traveling the playground and landing on the new girl sitting by herself on the swingset.

“Here,” she says to Johnny Valdes, passing him her sword with great reverence. “You be Aragorn awhile.”

He stares at her like she’s just offered to knight him.

“Really?” he whispers.

“Sure,” she shrugs, used to being the hero, to fighting with boys until she gets her own way. She gives him a benign smile and walks away with the grace and gravity of a future king, not dropping the act until she’s well across the playground and near the swings.

“Hey,” she says breathlessly, jogging up to Rose and coming to a stop a few feet from her. She looks down at Rose’s dusty mary janes dragging in the dirt, her heart already racing. “Want me to push you?”

She can see it run across Rose’s face, the annoyance at being treated like she’s little, the stubbornness not hiding far beneath pink-stained, freckled cheeks.

“Sure,” Rose says instead, ducking her head right after, so she misses Adrianne’s smile.

 

It had taken three phonecalls to Adrianne’s dad and an amazing amount of convincing, but Rose Blake Winslow is dropped off at the apartment Adrianne shares with her dad and older brother at 10am by a silver Lexus, the driver remaining a mystery as they pull away as fast as they’d come.

Adrianne’s wearing her usual flared jeans and black tanktop, her Converse a faded grey that used to be black and once belonged to her brother, Sawyer. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, she’s freshly showered and bright-eyed, and her smile becomes a grin when Rose runs up to her in a pink sundress smattered with yellow daisies, her red hair soft and loose around her tanned, freckled shoulders, long enough to brush her elbows.

“Hi,” Rose says, bashful now that she’s dashed up to Adrianne who shifts fitfully in front of her like an excited puppy, her cheeks hurting from more joy than she’s felt maybe in her whole life.

Adrianne’s hands twist and tangle in front of her, bottom lip caught between her teeth as she chews on it hard.

“Wanna see my favorite tree?” she asks, trying not to look too hopeful.

Rose nods, dimples peeking out as she hops just once on her yellow glitter jellied-feet.

“Yes!”

The tree is in a park half a block from their apartment building, and Dad has been letting Adrianne walk there on her own since last summer. Adrianne leads Rose confidently through the park, past the babies on safety swings and smelly teenage boys on the basketball courts, walking and walking until there’s nothing but the winding trail through the more wooded part of the park and joggers in tight shorts dashing by.

The tree is over a bridge and beside a creek, big and old with plenty of room to sprawl out just one branch up. She stretches up onto her tiptoes and grabs the lowest branch, maybe showing off a little as she swings up onto it with her long legs and straddles it, squinting down at Rose.

“You ever climbed a tree?” she asks, her feet swinging a few feet above Rose’s head. Rose shakes her head, staring up at Adrianne all nervous and unsure, like she almosts wishes she hadn’t come over. Adrianne drops the cool kid act and leans down, reaching out with her right hand.

“C’mon, I’ll help. I promise I won’t let you get hurt.”

Rose hesitates, looking from Adrianne’s eyes to her hand, and she takes a deep breath before she reaches out with both of her smaller ones, holding on tight and trying to jump. Adrianne holds onto the branch with her thighs, gritting her teeth as she pulls Rose straight up and into the tree, only relaxing when Rose gets her feet under her and can sink down on the branch herself, leaning back against the trunk with a breathless laugh.

“I’ve never been in a tree before,” she says, both her hands gripping the branch beneath her like she’s going to be pulled off any second.

“Why not?” Adrianne asks, happy to give up her usual spot against the tree trunk for her new friend. She folds her legs up in her lap and relaxes, trying to show Rose there’s nothing to be scared of.

“I’m afraid of heights,” Rose confesses, not meeting Adrianne’s eyes, like it’s something to be ashamed of.

“Just don’t look down. Pretend you’re sitting on the kitchen counter or something,” Adrianne suggests, her hands gripped together in her lap so she doesn’t reach out and try to pull the stray bit of bark tangled in Rose’s now-wild hair.

“Momma would never let me sit on the kitchen counter!” Rose laughs, making Adrianne smile with the bright sound of it. “She’d ground me for a week!”

Adrianne raises her eyebrows.

“Do you get grounded?”

“No,” Rose is quick to say, relaxing back against the tree trunk and letting her fingers pet over the rough branch instead of clinging to it. “But my brother does. All the time. He’s always grounded.”

Adrianne quietly wonders what it’s like to not be the problem child, to just see it happening to her brother instead of being the one who makes her dad angry and worry. She gives Rose a smile.

“Is it just you and your brother and mom?”

“No,” Rose says again, but it’s softer, sadder this time. She goes from fidgeting with the wood of the tree to the hem of her dress, fingers sliding over the white thread stitched there as her eyes follow. “My dad, too. But he’s not home a lot.”

“Is he a workaholic?” Adrianne asks, used to hearing the word out of her brother’s mouth about Dad, a little proud of how worldly it sounds.

“He’s got cancer. He’s at the doctor a lot, trying to get better. And when he is home, he’s so sick that he just stays in bed. Momma has to bring him food in bed and everything.”

Adrianne deflates, slumping over with painful empathy for a girl she just met, something she can’t even manage for her own brother most of the time.

“Oh,” she manages lamely, her throat tight as she digs a fingernail into the rubber soul of her shoe. Rose is in tears now, big brown eyes blurred with sadness that slides down her cheeks, over freckles and pink, and she’s too pretty to cry. It’s not fair.

“Hey,” Adrianne says, sudden and bright, forcing a smile onto her face, “I have a birthmark on my leg that’s in the shape of a heart. Wanna see?”

Rose looks up at her then, her eyes rounding out bigger than Adrianne’s ever seen. She blinks, just once, the last of her forgotten tears falling.

“Show me,” Rose says.

Adrianne pushes up onto her feet right there on the branch, smirking at the shock on Rose’s face when she starts to unbutton and unzip her pants. She slides her jeans down and leans over to squint at her own leg, her finger lighting right beside the mark in question: a tiny heart just above her right knee, rosy pink and no bigger than her pinky nail.

“Told you,” she says.

Rose stares at the mark and then up at Adrianne, her eyes just as wide even now, unblinking as she searches Adrianne’s. Adrianne frowns, pulling her jeans back up fast and in a fit of self-consciousness, fumbling a little as she buttons them back up and sinks back down onto the branch.

“...What?”

“I have one, too,” Rose replies, her lashes finally lowering in slow amazement.

Adrianne raises an eyebrow.

“Have what, too?”

“A heartmark.”

Adrianne narrows her eyes at her, having to restrain herself from crossing her arms over her chest.

“Prove it.”

Rose shifts a little then, glancing around at the green canopy hiding them from the rest of the world below.

“You promise nobody can see us up here?”

Adrianne crosses her heart solemnly.

Rose pulls down the straps on her pink sundress and doesn’t stop until the top is around her waist, her flat, pale chest exposed.

“See?” she says, trying to sound nonchalant even though she’s flushed down to her tiny pink nipples. Her nails are a chipped hot pink glitter, her fingers dirty from climbing up here, but her little forefinger lights just beside her left nipple, drawing attention to Adrianne’s first sign of fate.

It’s small, not quite as big as Adrianne’s, but it’s distinct and clear, a little lighter than the freckles that smatter Rose’s body.

A matching heart on Rose’s chest, something Adrianne can’t take her eyes off of once she sees it.

“Oh,” is all she manages, her actual heart pounding in her ears.

“See, Annie?” Rose says with a triumphant smile as she tugs her dress back up, straps returning to her shoulders, the heart hidden once again. “We match!”

“We do,” Adrianne replies, a weird, painful ache coiling in her stomach like something alive. She reaches out to absently fix the twist in Rose’s strap. She looks up then, stormy blue eyes catching deep brown. She doesn’t realize her fingers are still tucked beneath the strap, lingering against chocolate-dusted skin.

She feels warm all over.

“We were meant to meet,” Adrianne tells her with a conviction she didn’t know she possessed.

Rose grins, showing off her snaggle tooth.

“Meant to be best friends forever,” she elaborates, yellow glitter jellies tucking in neatly against black chucks.

“Yeah,” Adrianne says faintly, already feeling like she’s lost something. “Best friends forever.”

 

****

**1999**

 

Dad’s late. Again.

It wouldn’t be so bad if she was alone. Adrianne’s used to being left places. She’s used to pretending to know what’s going on when some adult in charge starts to eye her in worry, knows how to sound confident and flippant when they ask if she needs a ride home. She knows how to make herself small and find something to do while her dad finishes his shift or wakes up from his nap on the couch or coaching Sawyer’s game, whatever needs to happen before Adrianne is picked up.

But Rose is with her this time.

“Sorry,” she says again, for the tenth time. The adrenaline from softball practice has worn off, and now she’s just sweaty and dirty next to her beautiful, pristine best friend, next to Rose whose red hair is up in a careful ponytail and whose shorts are scandalously cut and who has her practice pom-poms ready.

Today, Dad was also supposed to give them a ride to Rose’s cheerleading practice after Adrianne’s was finished.

“Not your fault,” Rose says simply, her white-shoed feet tucked carefully together on the empty bleachers while Adrianne paces in front of her, scuffing up dirt in an uneven track back and forth, back and forth. “At least it’s not cold, right?”

“Guess so,” Adrianne mumbles, letting the words settle between them before she looks up at Rose in concern. She’s wearing a thin practice jacket over her t-shirt, and her shorts leave her long, freckled legs bare, the pale hairs on them standing up straight, goosebumps prickling from her ruffled socks to the tops of her thighs. She grits her teeth and sends a throb of disdain to her dad. “Here. I have…”

She trails off in a fit of chivalrous shyness, busying herself by digging through her practice bag and coming up with a hoodie that has her number--16--on the back, her last name curved above it in all its Polish glory. She drapes it over Rose’s skinny legs, not meeting her eyes when she can tell Rose is smiling up at her.

“It’s warm,” Rose says as a thank you, shifting so she can snuggle up under it as best she can. Adrianne puffs up with pride inside, feeling less useless now, though not by much. Mrs. Winslow had trusted Dad to drive Rose to and from cheerleading practice this season, a reluctant but necessary decision; Rose’s dad’s cancer has come back, and her parents spend most of their time in hospital rooms or in the room downstairs at their big house that they’d converted to a place for her dad to get better.

“I bet you’re hungry,” Adrianne replies, digging more adamantly through her bag now, looking for a half-finished bag of Cheetos or a stray apple, when Rose’s chilly hand comes to rest on hers in the bag.

“I’m fine, Annie. Promise.” Her voice is soft, patient, like she’s used to Adrianne’s overprotectiveness. And after four years of friendship, she probably is. Adrianne takes a deep breath, keeping her hand still under Rose’s, the darkness closing in around them, lights coming up around the one diamond still being used for practice.

Rose is just so little. Adrianne’s got to look out for her. She doesn’t know how to do anything else.

A pair of headlights eases its way down the hill from the highway and toward them, and a split second of irrational fear seizes her. What if it’s a murderer? Or one of those guys who likes little girls? Adrianne’s tall for eleven, but she doesn’t think she can take on a full-grown man to protect Rose. Not yet anyway. 

She decides then and there that this is her last season of softball. She’s signing up for jujutsu this summer.

“Hurry up!” Sawyer yells from the passenger seat of the truck as it slows to a stop a few yards away, the engine idling in a low rumble. “We’ve got pizza, and I don’t want it to get cold!”

Adrianne rolls her eyes, grits her teeth, and gathers up her bag and her glove.

“Jerk,” she mutters, leading Rose across the worn-out road to the parking lot, opening the door to her dad’s truck. She peers inside as Rose climbs up and into the seat beside Sawyer. “Where have you been? Rose missed practice!”

“I’m sorry,” Dad sighs, reaching up to adjust the heat while a Clint Black song croons softly from the speakers. “Saw’s game went into overtime, and we had a long talk after the game. There was this--”

“I don’t care, Dad.” Adrianne hauls herself into the truck last and leans in against Rose to pull the door closed, trapping the four of them in nice and tight, like sardines. The cabin goes dark as it warms up, the silence awkward in the face of Adrianne’s annoyance. “Rose was counting on us.”

“I’m doing the best I can, Adri,” Dad shoots back tiredly, putting the truck into drive and making his slow way back out of Scott Park. “I need you to cut me some slack sometimes, kid.”

She sucks in a breath to say something back, something maybe scathing and snappy, but the fight leaves her when she sees Rose look over at her in the faint glow from the streetlights and give her a small smile. 

“Pizza smells good,” Rose says enthusiastically, a tiny thing caught between two towering Palicki kids, but she has both of their attention.

“Pepperoni and sausage,” Sawyer announces, stinking of sweat and grinning with a victory Adrianne doesn’t even have to ask about. He’s tall even for thirteen, and Adrianne knows he’s already got girls calling him at home. Still, his eyes catch and stay on Rose’s long legs next to him on the long bench seat, and his smile spreads into something Adrianne decides is wicked. “They let you practice in a bathing suit?”

“It’s not a bathing suit!” Rose laughs, squirming in the seat and trying without success to tug her shorts down. “It’s just easier to do jumps and splits in shorts like these.”

“Might as well be naked,” he says, quiet, and Adrianne grabs the discarded hoodie wedged between her and Rose and throws it over her best friend’s legs, tucking it under her thighs so that no part of her bare skin is showing or touching Sawyer.

“There,” Adrianne says, glaring at her brother in the near-dark. “Is that better?”

Sawyer sneers at her, his full mouth curling up into a smirk. He stays silent for a few beats before turning to Dad beside him who is humming along with whatever song is on the radio and ignoring the three of them for his own mental health, probably.

“Dad,” he starts, sounding thoughtful, “is eleven too young to get PMS?”

“You butthole,” Adrianne snarls, reaching over Rose with a closed fist that she lands with a hard punch on Sawyer’s leg. He grits his teeth and holds in the whine that wants to escape, probably because Rose is here.

“Dad! She just _punched me!_ ”

“Do you know how easy it would be to throw you both out of this truck?” Dad replies, turning into their apartment complex and slowing down to pass over the first speed bump. “So easy. Two little blond kids? You’d get snapped right up. They’d probably sell you for parts downtown somewhere. And me’n Rose could have this whole pizza to ourselves.”

“Dad, that’s so morbid,” Adrianne groans, showing off her new favorite word and opening up the door as soon as Dad pulls into his parking space. Rose giggles, forever-amused by the uncultured bickering of the Palickis that is so very different from the quiet of her own house. Adrianne relaxes enough to smile reluctantly, turning her attention to the giant box of pizza Sawyer passes her and to her own empty stomach.

 

“Are you plucking your eyebrows?” Adrianne calls through the bathroom door as she knocks on it, sisterly instinct getting the reaction she wants, because she hears Sawyer slamming the medicine cabinet closed.

“I’m almost done, Adri, Jesus! Keep your panties on.” Adrianne can smell the Noxzema through the closed door, and the knowledge of her handsome brother’s battle with bad skin makes her smile smugly. She reaches up to touch her own smooth face, quietly praying all the while that she doesn’t end up with zits soon, too.

It takes a couple of minutes, but Sawyer opens the door, a glare already situated on his face for Adrianne. He leans against the doorframe and extends his control over the bathroom for a few more seconds, a show of power that has Adrianne gritting her teeth and standing up as tall as she can.

“Get out of my way,” she says, her voice as low as possible.

“You gonna shave your pits? They’re getting kinda hairy,” Sawyer informs her, reaching up to wedge his fingers between her rib and her arm to pull at underarm hair that doesn’t exist yet.

“Quit it!” She digs her nails into his arm and squeezes until he yelps and yanks his hand back. He shoulders past her so hard she nearly falls over, but she locks her knees and refuses to show him how much he’d knocked her off balance. She turns to watch him stalk down the hallway, not keeping her voice down when she yells after him. “And quit looking at Rose!”

Sawyer turns to give her an eyeroll only a certified teenager is capable of, looking more snide and ugly to Adrianne every single day.

“I’m not looking at your _stupid_ friend,” he snaps with a surprising amount of heat. “I don’t give a crap about a dumb little kid in the _fifth grade_. I have a girlfriend. I’m not desperate.”

Every muscle in Adrianne’s body tenses, and she’s glaring so fiercely through the dark hallway that she swears she could melt Sawyer with her eyes like Supergirl if she really, really tries.

“Well, keep your disgusting eyes _off_ her. She thinks you’re gross, and every time you talk to her, it makes her sick.”

Sawyer scoffs, giving another hard roll of his eyes.

“Go screw yourself, Adri.”

It’s a scandalous thing to say, especially when Dad’s home and Adrianne could so easily run and tell. But this is a test of wills, the beginning of a feud that will see them through high school and beyond, and Adrianne isn’t going to run and tattle and expose this whole showdown. She won’t give Sawyer the satisfaction.

She flips him off with both hands, another grave offense, one that she can get away with tonight and she knows it. It’s freeing and exciting, and she’s almost smiling when Sawyer slams his bedroom door and she pads into the bathroom, staring at her own clear complexion and fury-flushed cheeks.

Anger is a good look for her, she decides.

She brushes her teeth and makes sure her hair looks okay before she goes back to her room where Rose is waiting with two glasses of cherry Pepsi with ice, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor.

 _Heathers_ is in the VCR, paused and ready to start. Rose’s hair is down, soft and brushed out, a silent invitation for Adrianne to play with it later when they get sleepy.

Her heart gives a hard, dangerously adoring thump.

“Ready?” Rose says, leaning back against Adrianne’s bed, remote control in her hand. Adrianne takes her place beside Rose, safe here in her room for their bare legs and their unchecked giggles and their whispered secrets. Safe here, with each other.

She curls around Rose tight that night like she always does, but maybe she clutches her a little closer than usual, burying her face in strawberry-scented hair that she brushed out with her own careful fingers. After her breathing evens out and she finally relaxes into the bed and into the rhythm of her fingers sliding through the thick auburn of Rose’s hair, Adrianne pulls her bottom lip right up into her mouth and starts to suck on it, subconscious and self-soothing and something she’s done since she was very, very young. Rose commented on it once, asked her about it, and Adrianne could only say that she does it when she feels really happy or really safe. And the smile between them afterwards told Rose without words that, with her, Adrianne feels both.

Tonight, as always, Rose tucks back against Adrianne’s longer body and lets her hold on as tight as she needs to.

 

\---

 

Ten minutes before the last game of the season, Adrianne decides she can’t hold it anymore.

“C’mon, kid. Really?” Dad sighs, so close to actually whining. He’s wearing his Saints cap with Adrianne’s number on the back, and he looks just about as nervous as she feels. She shifts a little next to where he’s sitting in the bleachers, her stomach aching like she’d eaten too much at breakfast (she hadn’t) and a weird, new sensation of _I Gotta Go_ driving away any worry of not being on the pitcher’s mound in time.

The urgency must show on her normally stoic face because Dad slumps a little, reaching for his cold root beer and nodding toward the bathrooms.

“Go on, then. But hurry up! You don’t want Tiffany Sanders getting to pitch the last game of the season just because you had to pee.”

“Hell no, I don’t,” Adrianne mutters under her breath, glaring back toward the dugout where Tiffany is probably sitting and picking her nose. Dad laughs and tugs her long blonde ponytail, and she takes off at a dead run for the bathroom, her face hot with worry and strange anticipation.

The bathrooms at Scott Park are legendary in their grossness; no lights anywhere except the holes cut into the cement block high up near the ceiling, no doors on the stalls, every toilet using unflushed and floating with whatever the last few people left in it, and Adrianne’s favorite: no toilet paper. Ever.

She shuffles into the last stall and yanks her white softball pants down, sitting down on the probably piss-spotted toilet seat with something like relief.

She pees because it’s what her body’s programmed to do, and she frowns when nothing else wants to happen. She looks down between her legs at her white Hanes panties, expecting to see bleached white cotton in the scant light from the late afternoon sun, but she spies a splash of color that she’s never, ever seen before, not unless she’s skinned her knee or busted her nose or--

“Oh, God,” she whispers, all the color draining from her face, her small hands gripping the waistband of her pants.

This is it. She’s started her period.

“No. No, no, no. No. _Hell_ , no.” She spreads her legs wider and leans down closer to squint at it, making _sure_ it’s blood and not just something she sat in, maybe. But it’d be even worse if she sat in something, because then it would be on the back of her pants and not just--

She sits up straight again, staring out of the doorless stall at the mirror above the sink. Her own reflection is almost frightening, the expression on her face brand new in its very grownup dread.

She slowly moves her panties out of the way and peers beneath them, her stomach twisting up when she sees exactly what she’d been afraid of: a bloodstain on the butt of her pristine white softball pants about as big as her palm.

Adrianne doesn’t cry. Not even when the old dog dies in the movie, not when she broke two of her fingers because Sawyer slammed them in the car door, not when she got a birthday card this year from her mama and a crisp twenty dollar bill after an entire lifetime of not hearing from her. Not ever.

The burn of tears in her eyes is as unfamiliar as everything else that’s happening right now, and she fumbles for the toilet paper dispenser only to find that, of course, it’s empty.

“Shit, shit, _shit_!”

She lifts up a little and sees that there’s a few drops of blood plopping steadily into the yellowy water, and there’s nothing she can do but stick her hand down there to catch anything that wants to fall out while she shuffles with her pants around her knees to the giant roll of brown paper towels sitting on the damp counter and hurries back to the toilet before anybody sees her.

She rolls and rolls and rolls the paper towels around her hand until it’s several layers thick, and she tears it off and pries it off her hand, smiling down at her creation. She wipes herself a few times until she’s raw down there and most of the blood is gone, and she shoves the makeshift pad into her pants and stands up finally, pulling them back up and shifting around until the wad of paper towels conforms, more or less, to her body.

She glares at her reflection, angry at her entire body and feeling betrayed by it.

“You could’ve warned me,” she says to herself, reaching back to hit the lever on the toilet and flush away all the evidence of this new secret she has to keep.

“Palicki, get your booty on the field, pronto!” Coach Carruthers yells just as she runs past her dad on the bleachers and toward opening in the chain link fence. She yanks her white cap on, shoves a wad of Hubba Bubba in her mouth, and grabs her glove off the bench. 

She and Tiffany Sanders regard each other coolly as she struts by, nearly five feet tall at eleven years old and already more of a badass than both of these teams put together.

Or at least she likes to think so.

She forgets about the blood, about the feeling of wearing a damn diaper, about the stain on her white pants because she’s determined to strike out every single entitled jerk who plays for the Tigers.

Everything goes fine until it’s Adrianne’s turn to bat. She sidles up to the plate and kicks at the dirt on it out of habit, lining the tips of her toes up with the edge of the plate and lifting the bat above her shoulder.

She glares at the Tigers pitcher, daring her to try and throw a strike.

“Ew, Palicki. Are you _bleeding_? That’s dis _gusting_ ,” the catcher chirps, the usual shit-talking replaced with real repulsion. 

Adrianne stands up straight again, the bat falling from her shoulder and dragging the dirt. She turns slowly to glare down at the catcher, her hand tightening around the bat.

“How is something that happens to literally every single woman who ever lived disgusting? Is it disgusting when it happens to your mom, Liz?” She puts a hand on her hip and forces herself to at least sound like she means what she’s saying, and she will deny that her face is flushed from mortification until the day she dies. 

“My mom at least wears like a tampon or something. She doesn’t just let it _bleed through her clothes_!” Liz stands up and shoves her face mask back. “I can’t do this. I can’t be next to her. It’s too gross.”

“Sixteen, what’s the hold up?!” Coach yells over the growing din of voices from the stands, from the dugouts. 

“Get your ass back down there and try to catch the damn ball, you pantywaste,” Adrianne says quietly through gritted teeth, only loud enough for stupid fucking Liz and the umpire to hear her. 

“Liz, _focus_!” the Tigers’ coach calls from across the field. Liz glowers at Adrianne, only pulling her mask back down and crouching behind the plate when the Saints’ fans start booing. 

“You’re _nasty_ ,” Liz hisses just as the pitcher winds up and tosses the ball. Adrianne locks her knees, tenses her jaw, and swings as hard as she fucking can.

The crack of aluminum against the dirty softball is the most satisfying sound in the world, if you ask Adrianne. She rounds the bases at a leisurely pace, making sure to bump into every Tigers player she encounters until she gets back to home. She makes her last step directly on top of Liz’s foot, making sure to dig her cleats in until Liz yelps in pain.

She takes off her batting helmet and tosses it to the next girl who needs to warm up, and one glance at her dad’s beaming face in the stands makes her forget every single thing that happened before she hit that home run.

 

The next two months has Adrianne ruining every single pair of panties she owns, has her soaking shorts and jeans in secret bowls under the cabinet in the bathroom, has her scrubbing blood out as best as she can after Dad and Sawyer have gone to bed. Her closet becomes a graveyard for panties and clothes that she’s too embarrassed to throw away in fear of them being seen. 

She comes home from school one day to a cleaned and organized closet and three Wal-Mart bags on her bed: one full of pads and pantyliners and Teen Midol, one full of packages of her favorite white Hanes briefs, and the other with two new pairs of jeans and two pairs of basketball shorts.

Her dad is in his room, dozing in bed with the TV on, and Adrianne hovers in the doorway for a long, long time, staring in at him while humiliation and almost unbearable love war at each other inside of her.

They never speak of it, but the cabinet in the bathroom stays well-stocked with pads until she gets old enough to buy them herself.

 

```

 

Rose Blake Winslow loves Lizzie Borden.

It’s never been anything that weirds Adrianne out, and she loves watching the discomfort that takes over people’s faces whenever Rose gets started talking about her, or whenever she sings the rhyme to herself. Her copy of the giant _Lizzie Borden: Past & Present_ lives under her bed, a secret from her parents, so many pages dog-eared, so many passages underlined and memorized, ready to be spouted out at the vaguest hint of interest from anyone around her.

It might be Adrianne’s very favorite thing about Rose, next to her dark, dark eyes.

When Adrianne turns up on the Winslows’ doorstep at sunset on Halloween Eve and rings the bell, she feels like she should be better prepared for who answers the door than she is.

“Ohmygod,” she deadpans, keeping a straight face for all of five seconds before she bursts out laughing.

“Annie, look at you!” Rose rushes toward her and touches her long black wig that falls straight nearly to her elbows, her smeary, black-red mouth stretching into a smile while Rose fawns over her.

“Okay, wait, wait. We have to talk about you first. We _have_ to,” Adrianne says with a shake of her head, feeling like a whole other person in her layers and layers of makeup, in these boots that make her nearly half a foot taller so that she’s completely towering over Rose, even more than usual.

“Do you love it?!” Rose exclaims, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her hair pulled back tight from her face except a few curled falls that touch down around it, brushing along the sides. Her dress is extravagant, beautifully made, and looks uncomfortable as hell.

“You’re wearing a Victorian gown trick-or-treating?” Adrianne asks, still smiling because it’s the most perfect Halloween outfit for her Rosey that she’s ever, ever conceived off, and the grin that Rose has is contagious.

“It’s historically accurate, too. I made sure. We had it made. Mom said this counts as half of my Christmas present, but I don’t care. I _love_ it. I’ve been wearing it around the house for a week.” She spins in her dress, her button-up, low-heeled black boots clicking as she does. The sleeves are puffed up and full, the waist of it tight, pulling her into an even tinier form than she usually has. She has no boobs to speak of, of course, and the ruffled front of the dress hides that well, distracts from it.

“Aaaaand…” 

She holds up an axe then, the handle and the blade of it dark with dried blood, and the gleam in Rose’s eyes when she brandishes it is almost wicked. Adrianne feels a violent pang of love in her chest.

“Is it real?” she manages to ask.

“No! Ohmygod. My mom would have a coronary,” she laughs, holding it out to Adrianne for her to take it. “It’s a prop. It’s made of this rubber stuff though, so it’s still really heavy. Isn’t it awesome?”

“You look freakin’ amazing,” Adrianne tells her, and she means it completely. She gives her a final once over and shakes her head in astonishment, holding out the axe for it to be taken back by its rightful owner.

“Speaking of amazing!” Rose’s eyes light up as she looks Adrianne over again, at her thrifted vest and tophat and chains that make up the rest of her costume. “I love it. Like, _so much_. And the one white contact! It’s so creepy. _So._ Creepy!”

Adrianne’s face hurts from smiling.

“You ready, Miss Borden?”

Rose reaches down beside the door in the house and grabs a basket covered in black velvet and black lace to go with the ensemble, a complete contrast to the plastic Frankenstein pail from McDonald’s that Adrianne’s holding.

She loops her arm through Adrianne’s elbow, standing up straight and tall, basket over her arm, axe clutched tight in her hand. She looks radiant.

“Ready, Mr. Manson.”

Needless to say, not many people in Rose’s wealthy Old West End neighborhood appreciated Lizzie Borden, the littlest axe murderess, being escorted by an unrepentant, lanky miniature Marilyn Manson, and the skimpy amount of candy in their bags by the end of it proves it.

Rose marches them down to the CVS and fills a shopping basket with bags and bags of clearance Halloween candy, pulls out what’s left of her allowance from the week, and hands it over to the cashier.

It’s the best Halloween Adrianne has for many, many years.

 

**2001**

 

“What about necrophilia?”

Adrianne shrugs from the center of her musical storm, surrounded by hundreds of CDs that make up Rose and Adrianne’s shared collection. They’d had a long discussion about it and decided that consolidation just made good sense. They would share custody of CDs, and because they saw each other every single day, it wouldn’t be a huge deal to ask for a certain album or genre collection or whatever. 

To Adrianne, it feels a little bit like marriage.

“Whatever,” she says, trying to keep any repulsion off her face as she tucks A Perfect Circle’s _Mer de Noms_ behind Temple of the Dog’s self-titled in the ‘side projects of already famous people’ pile. “I mean… who am I to judge? I say I wouldn’t fuck a dead person, but maybe it comes down to situation sometimes.”

Rose is quiet, but Adrianne can’t tell without looking at her if it’s in disgust or contemplation.

“So… who would be on your list?”

Adrianne looks up then, an eyebrow raised in amusement.

“Who would be on my corpsefucking list?”

Rose grins, pink flooding dark on full, freckled cheeks.

“That sounds like the opening line of a White Zombie song,” she says.

Adrianne snorts, refocusing on the CDs for a minute so she doesn’t just blurt out _you and Mila Kunis_ in a fit of assumed connection. She lines up the edges of discs already stacked together, her chest heavy with almost-confessions. She finally sighs and tosses Mad Season onto the supergroup pile.

“I don’t really wanna play this game,” she finally says, wishing she’d tried to inject a little more humor into her words. “Why don’t _you_ answer.”

“I wouldn’t fuck a dead person,” Rose replies, nose wrinkled as she takes a sip of her red apple Snapple. “No. Way.”

“Not even if it was… Brandon Boyd?”

Rose gives a ridiculously dreamy sigh and flops over onto her side, nearly knocking over at least three stacks but only managing to make them tremble.

“He would be the prettiest corpse,” she sighs.

A surprised laugh leaves Adrianne in a bark so loud that Rose jumps.

“Officially the weirdest thing you’ve ever said,” she tells Rose, passing her Joni Mitchell for the Girls With Feelings pile. 

“Oh! Did I tell you about the case of those two nurses I read the other day? The lesbian nurses?” Rose flips over onto her belly, waves of thick, auburn curls tumbling over one shoulder, her tanktop falling open just enough for Adrianne to clearly see her tits; small, hard-tipped things that just barely hang down away from her body. Adrianne sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and drops her eyes back to the task at hand, fighting to ignore the hot swoop in her belly at the word _lesbian_ spoken so casually by Rose fucking Winslow.

“Dunno,” Adrianne replies, like she would ever forget Rose talking about that. Ever. “I don’t think so?”

“Ohmygod, okay.” Rose scrambles to sit up, legs folded up in a ridiculously graceful tangle, hair still over one shoulder. “So it was these two ladies who met while they were working at a nursing home in Michigan or something. They were in their twenties, and one of them was married, with, like, kids. And anyway, they started having an affair with each other. One of them was super dominant, you know? She liked to choke the other one while they were… doing it. Steal her breath.”

“Yeah,” Adrianne mumbles so Rose knows she’s listening, but what Rose doesn’t know is that Adrianne is clutching her thighs together tight, trying to calm the throb between her legs but only managing to accentuate it.

“So she got the idea one day that they should kill patients together. Old people in the nursing home. And the bossy one would smother them while the other one watched, and they’d, like. Have sex sometimes right after. Like… they were so turned on by it that they would go into a janitor’s closet right then. Or sometimes they’d do it while they were washing the dead body. They picked people for their names because they were trying to spell out M-U-R-D-E-R with their initials.”

“That’s sick,” Adrianne says, breathy and gravelly impressed. Rose looks flushed and proud of herself and powers on.

“Right? So, they they kill five people. _Five_. And the toppy one wants the other one to kill the last one, to prove her love to her. Only she doesn’t want to do it. So they break up, and the toppy one starts dating another woman. And then she moves away, I think. To Texas or somewhere. And the other one tells her husband what happened, and then they go to the police. Crazy. Just… so, so crazy.” Rose reaches for her third clementine of the morning and starts to peel it without ever looking away from Adrianne.

“So… what happened to ‘em?” She holds up a Paula Cole CD with a smirk. “This is so yours.”

Rose grins and snatches the CD away, adding it to the pile on top of _Blue_.

“They’re both in jail. Have been for at least ten years, I think.” She holds out a wedge of clementine for Adrianne to take, and Adri leans down and wraps her lips around it, biting into the sweet brightness of citrus, neither of them reacting to the fact that her mouth touched Rose’s fingers.

“Sucks they didn’t get the last letter though. That would drive me insane.” She swallows and glances up at Rose who has fallen quiet again, and she’s amazed to find Rose staring at her in some kind of wide-eyed, dreamy adoration, a look Adrianne has never seen on anybody’s face directed her way, let alone Rose.

“How are you so perfect?” Rose asks, slouching and unshowered with a zit on her nose, but she’s the single most beautiful thing Adrianne has ever seen. Adrianne shakes her head, forcing away the dangerous burst of love that’s threatening to explode all over Rose’s messy bedroom.

“I think all that citrus has gone to your head,” she says instead. She stops and squints at Rose, leaning in close enough to hear her soft breathing. “Rosey, it’s me. Adrianne. Not Brandon Boyd. You know that, right?”

Rose doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t change the subject, and her smile doesn’t expand into anything silly.

“So, if me being a vet and you being a club promoter doesn’t work out, will you be a lesbian serial killer nurse with me?” Rose looks so sweet, so earnest, like she’d just asked Adrianne to prom instead of inviting her into a gay life of crime. She holds her Snapple out for Adrianne to take a sip, and Adrianne’s tongue touches the rim before her mouth just so she can taste Rose’s spit.

“We’ll spell anything you want,” Adrianne promises, and she wonders how much of it is a joke, for both of them.

Well. Maybe the murder part.

 

 

When the NSYNC CD starts over for the third time, Adrianne grits her teeth so hard they squeak.

Nobody else seems to mind or even notice, for that matter. It’s hot enough that the bottoms of her feet are burning on the damp concrete, but she keeps her oversized Heart t-shirt on and fights for a mask of neutrality behind her sunglasses.

It’s late July and it’s Rose’s birthday, and that always, always means a pool party.

Thirteen is a bigger birthday than most, so there’s nearly double the people here this year, some of whom Adrianne recognizes from school, but she’s never cared to learn their names. Rose had been discovered this past year, seen for the very first time by the popular kids in the 7th grade. They’d spent the whole school year trying to pry her completely from Adrianne, trying to get her to come hang out with them after school and sit with them during lunch and date the stupid soccer captain in their little cluster, and none of them, not a single one, has anything but disdain for Adrianne.

She’s been successful so far in staying invisible, in not drawing any attention to her lanky body being covered by her shirt, to the fact that she hasn’t spoken to a single person since the party started, or to the way she can’t seem to keep her eyes off of all the wet bodies splashing in front of her.

Some girls are in one-piece bathing suits, but most of them are in two-pieces, brand new swells of breasts jiggling as they run and jump and climb on each other and dry off with faded Lisa Frank towels and eat greasy, lukewarm slices of pizza. Suit bottoms caught in small handfuls of asses before they’re tugged out by distracted fingers, flat tummies writhing and backs arching and long legs carefully shaved, maybe for the very first time.

Adrianne squirms on the wooden pool chair, her newly short hair falling from its tuck behind her ears and brushing her overheated cheeks.

She seriously hasn’t even noticed that there are guys here.

“What the hell are we listening to?” comes a sudden voice, one that’s way too familiar, that Adrianne has to hear every day of her life, whether she wants to or not. She closes her eyes and tries to will him away by desperation alone.

Sawyer.

The only good thing to come from his sudden appearance at Rose’s party is that the fucking NSYNC CD stops. There are some protests, some whines and eyerolls that Adrianne sees when she finally peeks, and she can’t help but smile at the sight of three or four older kids gathered around a massive case of CDs, flipping through page after page of them while they talk heatedly.

Red Hot Chili Pepper’s latest starts up, and Adrianne finds herself a little disappointed by the choice. She leans back in the chair, her long, tanned legs pulled up like a baby deer, attention falling from the party again and sinking back inside. 

Sawyer calls her a moody bitch. She prefers to think of herself as introspective.

“Anthony Kiedis is always better than fucking Justin Timberlake, at least,” someone says out of fucking nowhere, and Adrianne startles before looking up above her head where a girl is standing with a half-crushed pack of Camels.

“Always,” Adrianne agrees automatically, craning in her seat to see the girl better. She’s older, for sure, probably showed up with Sawyer. Adrianne’s never seen her before, and she’d definitely remember: a girl about as tall as Adri is herself, hair dyed black but her roots are growing in a light brown, her eyes big and brown and tirelessly rimmed in black, and she’s watching Adrianne with interest as she fishes a cigarette out of the pack and digs into the pocket of her jean shorts for a lighter.

“You wanna?” the girl asks, holding up the cigarette.

“Y-Yeah,” Adrianne replies even though she’s never smoked a day in her life, the chair clattering as she jumps up from it and pads along behind the girl, her bare feet burning on the concrete.

They walk through the Winslows’ well-tended tropical garden and end up in a small corner of the backyard near the line of trees that separates the house from the neighbors. The girl sits down on the wooden swing in the shaded part, one of her legs pulled up into the seat, her thick, muscled thigh tensing to show off how toned she is. Adrianne stands on her stick legs a few feet away like she’s the one who’s a stranger to this place, her hands tugging fitfully at the bottom of her shirt.

“You like Heart?” the girl asks, nodding at Adrianne’s shirt as she flicks a lighter at the end of her cigarette. A jump of flame brings about the smell of cigarette smoke, and Adrianne glances back at the Winslows’ big, watchful windows, wondering if they’re still visible over here in this forgotten corner.

“Definitely,” Adrianne says, gathering up her courage and approaching the swing like it’s part of a mission. She sits down on it, keeping a few feet between her and the girl, her feet angled down to tickle along the freshly mowed grass. 

“They your favorite?” The cigarette is presented to Adrianne and she takes it as casually as she possibly can, looking down at it like it’s a weapon before she brings it to her lips and takes a short, quick suck. Smoke gets pulled into her lungs and it burns in the weirdest way, feels exactly like dark grey. She exhales slow and careful, glancing over to see that the girl isn’t laughing at her, isn’t even smirking. She’s waiting for an answer.

“I wouldn’t… I mean, not my _favorite_ , probably. But they’re really good.” She feels a nervous kind of excitement when the cigarette gets handed back to her, and she takes it much more readily this time.

“Who’s your favorite?” The girl is pretty, her nose small and cute, her mouth a pale pink pillow with just a few freckles dotting along her face. She looks like she put today’s eyeliner on over yesterday’s, and probably the day before that, and the one before that. She’s watching Adrianne in a way Adri’s not used to being looked at, to being seen, and it makes her feel warm and restless. She shifts on the swing, bringing her legs to fold up Indian-style as she takes a bigger drag from the cigarette.

“Probably, um,” she begins, blue eyes flicking to the girl nervously, so afraid of being seen as uncool, unworthy. “I like the Donnas. And Kitty. Hole, Fiona Apple, Garbage, Letters to Cleo--”

“You ever listened to the Red Aunts?” When the girl takes the cigarette back, their fingers touch for the first time, one short, chipped black fingernail scraping just barely over Adrianne’s knuckle. She feels how hot her face is and she doesn’t fucking know why.

“No?” she replies, flying back through her mental inventory of bootleg cassettes and burned CDs she’s stolen from Sawyer. She wishes she were better at lying, that she could’ve said yes and looked convincing, but the girl would’ve known she was lying anyway. Better to just let her know now that she’s pathetic and has just stopped listening to the radio in the last year.

“I’ll bring you a CD,” the girl says with a smile, her back against the arm of the chair now so she’s angled toward Adrianne, her strong legs taking up half the seat of the swing. Adrianne can’t keep her smile in, but she can’t seem to meet the girl’s eyes.

“Thanks.”

“You’re Sawyer’s little sister, right? Adri?” The girl inhales like she’s been smoking since she was in a crib, and Adrianne watches her mouth out of the corner of her eye, watches the full softness of it shape into a pursed circle, watches it blow smoke up into the late afternoon air.

She nods, trying to pull her shirt down to cover her knobby knees.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met you before,” she says, her hair falling from behind her ear and settling along her jaw again.

“Rachel,” the girl replies, her voice raspier since she started smoking, something low and warm and so adult. Adrianne is fatally fascinated. “But you can call me Rach.”

“Cool,” Adrianne manages softly, running the edge of a fingernail along a scab on her knee. She knows Rachel is watching her, is wanting her attention, but she doesn’t know how to give it, doesn’t really know what is going on here or what Rachel wants.

“You got a boyfriend?”

Adrianne rolls her eyes before she can catch herself, and Rachel snorts when she does, a real grin breaking out across her face.

“Girlfriend?” Rachel continues, one of her flipflops pressing against the side of Adrianne’s thigh. Adrianne’s head snaps over immediately and she meets Rachel’s eyes head-on, and she must look caught, look so, so obvious, because Rachel’s smile is nothing but understanding.

“Don’t worry,” she says, reaching out to rest her warm hand on Adrianne’s thigh. “You’re among family.”

Adrianne doesn’t have the slightest idea what that means, doesn’t even know what to say back to her or what to deny, and it must register plainly on her face because Rachel is suddenly closer, the cigarette gone but the smell of it lingers between them, on her breath.

“Have you done anything yet? With a girl?”

She thinks about Rose, thinks about watching Rose struggle with putting on a training bra before she finally goes over to help her. She thinks about the tiny points of her breasts, the rosy centers of them that look like the palest candy. She thinks about sharing suckers and drinks with Rose, about knowing the taste of her spit. She thinks about sharing headphones with her, sharing songs and albums and eras of music with that girl; she thinks about how often Rose kisses her goodbye with a pop on the mouth and doesn’t ever think twice about it; she thinks about Rose trying on clothes in front of Adrianne for hours and asking for opinions that Adrianne gives tirelessly from her sprawl on Rose’s bed, her eyes soft and forever and always on Rose’s lithe, petite body. She always says she loves everything on her, always tells her she’s beautiful, no matter what she’s wearing. And she always means it. It’s always true.

“N-No,” Adrianne says, but she wants to say yes. Wants to say she’s in love with one. The trapped words hurt in her mouth, feel barbed, make her taste blood. She refocuses on the girl in front of her, the one with a hand on Adrianne’s leg and not the one in a pink two-piece with heart-shaped white polka dots on it in the pool, in the center of everyone else’s attention, where she belongs.

Rachel doesn’t ask if she can kiss Adrianne, and Adrianne wouldn’t have the breath to say yes anyway. The feel of another mouth on her own is so strange, feels so out of control and slippery and huge. She tries to kiss back, to move her lips under Rachel’s, and the hand that comes up to cup her cheek stills her a little, brings her back into her body and makes her realize how fast her heart is beating.

“Slow down,” Rachel says quietly, her thumb stroking along the side of Adrianne’s mouth. “Just open your lips a little. And move ‘em like they’re gonna massage mine, okay?”

“Okay,” Adrianne breathes, her eyes closed, lips parted breathlessly. She feels so hot all over, feels a dangerously deep pulse between her legs, like her heart set up camp down there and made her drip. Rachel guides Adrianne’s head to the side and brings their mouths back together, lips moving a lot smoother this time, with a timid rhythm that she’s realizing Rachel is letting her set.

She startles when Rachel’s tongue dips in, but it’s so sexy, such an invasive and intimate thing that’s happening that she actually moans, lets it break out into the air as she shifts on the swing, trying to untangle her long legs and turn to face Rachel, to get closer.

“I just got my tits pierced last weekend,” Rachel says after awhile, after Adrianne’s lips are starting to feel numb and she’s dizzy from not breathing while she sucks on Rachel’s tongue. She comes back into herself and realizes she has a leg draped over Rachel’s lap and that her cunt is resting on the side of Rachel’s bare thigh. She knows she’s probably wet, that Rachel can probably feel it, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She gives the hand she’s got high up on the back of Adrianne’s thigh a squeeze and grins when Adrianne finally focuses on her eyes instead of her mouth.

“Did you?” she finally asks, her brain coming back online, her body tense as she forces herself not to grind against Rachel’s thigh.

“You wanna see?” Rachel sits up from her slouch, both hands going to the hem of her shirt. She yanks it off over her head after Adrianne nods, leaving her in a black cotton bra that’s probably a size too small, that’s overflowing with her C-cup breasts in her B-cup bra. Adrianne stares at the swell of them over the top of the cups, the pulse of her heart in her pussy growing faster, damper. She swallows the spit that’s suddenly flooded her mouth.

Rachel pulls the cups down and lets her tits fall out of them, and it’s a move that shifts something in Adrianne, changes her. She lunges forward to get her mouth on one of them, and only Rachel’s strong hand clamping around her chin stops her, mouth open, saliva about to drip from the sides of it.

“Gentle,” Rachel says quietly, like Adrianne’s a big dog about to play with a kitten. There are metal bars in Rachel’s nipples, the skin on either side of the bars a little red and obviously tender. Adrianne lets out a soft, hurt sound of wonder, of sympathy and hunger, and Rachel’s hand falls away from her face with silent permission that Adrianne takes immediately. She closes her eyes and lets her tongue touch first, the drippy-wet tip of it flicking against one of the pierced, hard points.

“ _Ohh_ , shit,” Rachel hisses, her hand threading hard and fast into the back of Adrianne’s hair, and Adrianne opens her mouth wider when she’s hauled forward, the soft round of a breast pillowing against her chin as she fumbles to wrap her lips around the nipple. 

_Yes_ , Adrianne’s mind growls, one of her hands snatching out to grab at Rachel’s hip, fingers slipping into an empty belt loop and holding on. She presses her hips forward desperately as she sucks, the metal bar clicking against her teeth, her clit digging in against the taut muscle of Rachel’s thigh.

Rachel pulls her off after a few minutes of increasingly hard sucking, and she slides off with a wet pop, her mouth open as she pants, eyes open to look up at Rachel.

“I wanna eat your pussy,” Rachel tells her, tucking Adrianne’s hair behind her ears almost sweetly, her breasts bare and lifted slightly by the bra caught up underneath them, one of them red and damp from Adrianne’s mouth. Adrianne just stares at her dumbly, trying to process the concept even as Rachel is sliding off the swing and down into the grass, kneeling there as she pries Adrianne’s legs apart.

She knows this girl is a sophomore, or at least she’s gonna be, and she wants to remind her that she’s only in the 8th grade, that she’s not even in high school yet. She’s not anybody yet, and definitely not somebody worth being on your knees in the grass of some stranger’s backyard for. 

“I bet you’ve got the hottest body,” Rachel sighs as she reaches up under Adrianne’s shirt for her bathing suit bottoms, a little pair of shorts that cover most of her ass, unlike the ones everybody else here is wearing. Adrianne can only slouch back against the swing and watch as Rachel yanks her bottoms off and shoves her legs apart and up. 

She’s already breathing hard, her face burning up with a deep shade of red that she hasn’t been capable of before today, but her naked, mostly hairless pussy is brought up right to the edge of the Winslows’ backyard swing, and it’s definitely soaking wet and so, so close to Rachel’s mouth already. She feels it pulse, a hot, needy throb, and she licks her lips and settles back as Rachel sits on her ass and moves in closer, her hands on Adrianne’s inner thighs, thumbs pulling back the small lips of Adrianne’s pussy.

She hopes it doesn’t smell weird.

Rachel looks so good between her legs, she looks like the porn videos from her dad’s collection under the bed, her eyes black-rimmed and staring right up at Adrianne as she brings her tongue flat against Adrianne’s cunt and licks straight up like she’s a melting ice cream cone instead of a thirteen-year-old virgin.

Adrianne shivers with her entire body, her feet stuttering on the edge of the swing, toes curling as she fights to keep her legs bent just like this, not wanting to do anything to ruin what Rachel is doing to her.

“Pretty fucking pussy,” Rachel whispers, her lips soaked with slick already, the words muffled by her own cunt and forgotten in a second because Rachel starts in on her then, her tongue wiggling its way inside of Adrianne’s slit and lapping around in there like she’s full of honey, like she’s something that tastes good, that’s worth taking the time to lick to the center of. 

Adrianne grips her knees and stares down at her in stunned, shuddering silence, her bottom lip caught in her mouth and she’s sucking on it like crazy. Rachel sounds like a dog drinking water the way she’s slurping at Adrianne’s pussy, and she’s got no hesitations about burying her whole face in and feasting, explaining to Adrianne immediately and without words why exactly it’s called eating a girl out.

The first brush of Rachel’s tongue over her clit sets Adrianne on fucking fire, and she jolts so hard on the swing that it shudders on its frame. Rachel catches her legs and holds onto her ankles, keeping her feet locked on the edge of the swing, keeping her thighs spread wide. 

“You’ve got a nice, fat clit,” Rachel tells her, licking her lips as she pulls back a little and stares at Adrianne’s cunt that feels swollen and flooded and like it’s visibly throbbing, her toes curling and flexing against the edge of the swing. “Did you like that? When I licked it?”

“Yes,” Adrianne says emphatically, wanting so badly to reach out and touch her, to pet her hair or run a thumb over her wet mouth, but she doesn’t know if she’s allowed, if that’s something people do. She takes a deep breath when Rachel moves back in, closing her eyes this time as she digs the tip of her tongue in right under Adrianne’s clit, making it firm and persistent as she massages up under the root of it, sending shocks of unbelievable heaven all over Adrianne’s skinny body.

“So wet,” Rachel mumbles, soaked words that end in a slurp and a hard swallow, and suddenly Adrianne’s whole heart is in Rachel’s mouth, her clit sucked into the most deliciously hot pressure, and she shoves her entire body down toward her, lifting her hips up so that her ass is off the swing so she can ride Rachel’s face, smashing it right up against her pussy and grinding against her mouth with everything she’s worth.

It all happens so fast, everything sped up and frantic, no one sense prevailing over the other because she can hear “Californication” playing nearby, can hear Rose’s voice over all others, the brightness of her laughter, can smell the sunscreen on her own skin, the ghost of their cigarette and the sweet brine of her own pussy, can feel Rachel’s tongue and her sucking mouth on her clit, can feel the wood digging into her shoulderblades and the arches of her feet and the breeze on her sweaty face, can taste Rachel’s smoky kisses and blood from biting into her bottom lip, and she can see the dishwater blonde of Rachel’s roots as she gives Adrianne head, can see the tight jiggle of her tits and the way her short fingernails are gonna leave marks on Adrianne’s calves.

It’s just a matter of seconds, maybe a full minute, but it all comes crashing down around her as she practically launches herself off the swing, amazed somewhere in the back of her mind that Rachel is still with her, that she doesn’t let go, that she pushes up onto her knees and stretches to follow the wild flail of Adrianne’s body, her tongue not missing a beat as she licks and fucks and deep-kisses at the gush leaving Adrianne’s pussy in wet pulses. 

She keeps quiet, just like she does at home at night in her bed, only the whites of her eyes showing as she comes and comes on Rachel’s mouth, her hands scrabbling across the swing, looking for something to hold onto and finding nothing.

Rachel only pulls back when Adrianne lets out a massive, relieved sigh, her body melting back against the swing, eyes closed but fluttering, one of her colt legs folding over to hide her newly awakened cunt that is still twitching and throbbing, probably soaking the wood she’s sitting on. She flings an arm over her eyes and rests her head back against the swing, letting the motion of it calm her, give her something to focus on while she tries to make her breathing even out again, and she’s more grateful for the way Rachel is touching her now, for the hands running up and down her shins and her thighs, for the mouth kissing at her knees and the tops of her feet, more grateful for the sweetness and acceptance shown now than she’s ever felt for anyone in her whole life.

She’s always felt gross, weird. Like her outsides match her fucked-up insides, like people can tell how strange she is just by looking at her. But Rachel doesn’t seem to mind. Doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with her. Or maybe Rachel is just fucked-up, too.

Adrianne decides she doesn’t mind either way.

Rachel climbs up on top of her on the swing, her jeans undone and loose around her hips, her belly soft and round and pudged out in the cutest way as she reaches for one of Adrianne’s limp hands, letting her fingers touch her stomach before she pushes Adrianne’s hand down into her shorts, into her panties, letting her feel the silky hair there, the damp heat.

Adrianne’s eyes are wide, unblinking as she stares up at Rachel on her lap, not even aware of the weight of her, of anything outside of her first feel of pussy.

“Oh, wow,” she whispers to herself, blushing a little when Rachel laughs, shifting on top of her to push her shorts down a little more, giving Adrianne room to move in her panties. She feels the soft flaps of her lips, the hard knot of her clit, and the sopping wet source of all that heat, the slick silkiness of her cunt, and it’s so fucking hot in there, so inviting and so soft that Adrianne feels drunk, elated to the point of a silent, unprovoked climax shivering over her body, pulling another oozy drip from between her own legs.

“I knew you’d like it,” Rachel says, smug and turned on and almost sweet, her hands cupping Adrianne’s cheeks and petting her hair, never sitting still as she rocks on Adrianne’s lap, making the swing sway and creak beneath them. “I get really wet.”

“Yeah, you do.” Adrianne looks up at her through her lashes and grins, pressing a kiss to the thumb that swipes over her lips, amazed and in love with the way that Rachel’s chin is still shining with her come. She twists her hand until it’s awkward, but she wants to curl her fingers up, wants to get in there and get inside and--

“That’s it.” Rachel sounds unlocked, like Adrianne has her under a spell, like she has complete control right now and is doing everything right. She pushes herself to sit up a little, to take her task seriously, and her eyebrows are pulled together in concentration as she lets two fingers slip into Rachel’s cunt, not really sure what to do with them or where to go now, but it feels so fucking good in here, feels unbelievable, and Adrianne has no idea how she’s ever supposed to be the same again, how she’s supposed to just go back to a normal life when she knows what girls feel like inside now, when she knows how wet and burning and soft they are, when she knows that some of them might let her do this to them. Might let her do anything to them.

She suddenly wants to make a list of things she wants to do, wants to spend her life scratching things off of it. Wants to die buried deep inside of the dripping pink she’s just now found and is in immediate, lifelong love with.

“Tell me,” Adrianne says, her voice clear and low, determined. She meets Rachel’s eyes and rubs at her tight inner walls while she does. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how you like it.”

“I don’t need you inside,” Rachel tells her even as she rocks down on Adrianne’s fingers, trying to ride them, her hips tipping back and forth. She’s flushed all the way down to her tits that Adrianne just now realizes are right in front of her face, just begging to be sucked on. 

In a minute. 

“Just work on my clit. Like I did you. That’s what I like. That’s what girls do, most of the time. If you let a girl get you off first, she’ll show you how she likes it done. Pay attention to what she does. Where she kisses you, if she plays with your tits, if she fingers you, how many fingers. If she’s careful with your clit or if she stays right there on it. Guys never do it right, no matter how many times a girl tries to show him. But a girl can listen. A girl can do it right. You can make her come better than any guy ever could.”

Adrianne thinks of Rose again while Rachel is giving her this fucking goldmine of dyke wisdom, she thinks of the guys who corner Rose against the lockers or tease her at lunch with all the foods she doesn’t like or who write her notes and tuck them into her backpack, notes full of amateur, pornographic writings probably written with one hand around their dick, and she decides right then and there that Rachel is absolutely right, that she will. She’ll take care of Rose. She’ll do everything Rose could ever want, and no guy could ever, ever compete or live up to her.

Adrianne will set the standard.

“Fuck yeah, girl. Just like that. Do it harder. Rub it real fuckin’ hard, I’m not gonna break.” Rachel’s playing with her own nipples as she grinds down on Adrianne’s twisted, working hand, her wrist and her elbow killing her, her fingers getting good and pruny, but she’s rubbing Rachel’s clit with her middle finger smashed against it, fucking her like when she does it to herself and she’s really, really close. Adrianne licks and kisses at Rachel’s tits while she plays with them, too inexperienced and over-eager to focus enough to do anything more, but it’s enough apparently, it’s fucking good enough because Rachel starts to soak her hand after just a few minutes, her thighs trembling and tense as her hips jerk hard, her clit giving a deep, secret pulse and then Rachel is arching back and shaking apart, her arms wrapped around Adrianne’s head, pulling her in so that her face is buried against her tits, and ohmygod, nothing is better than this. Nothing could be better than this single second. Nothing.

(Unless it was with Rose.)

Rachel reaches into her panties and covers Adrianne’s hand with her own, keeping her fingers right where they are, keeping Adrianne rubbing her slow and steady, bringing her own until she’s relaxed on her lap, until she’s rosy-cheeked and grinning as she leans down and kisses Adrianne, and this time, Adrianne’s the one pushing her tongue into a new place, getting it sucked on and licked at, and she’s a whole new person when they pull back and stare at each other and laugh at the same time.

“Can I have another cigarette?” Adrianne asks, a question that earns her another kiss before Rachel hops off her lap and settles back on the swing. Adrianne finds her bottoms in the grass and pulls them back on, feeling much more comfortable with her body now, with life in fucking general. She slouches against one side of the swing and takes the offered cigarette, loving how the end of it is damp with Rachel’s spit. She inhales with relish and exhales on a sigh.

Her fingers smell like pussy.

Adrianne’s mouth pulls into its first self-satisfied smirk, and she lets her legs fall apart as she leans back, sitting like she’s got a massive, pussy-soaked dick and freshly empty balls.

It will become her natural sprawl, one that’ll prove to be catnip to pretty girls with Daddy issues that only Adrianne can soothe.

 

Rachel walks back to the party in her panties and her bra, and she doesn’t hesitate to make a run for the pool and jump right in, the water splashing up on the sides and making a few girls who are sunbathing shriek. Adrianne goes over and sits down on the edge of the pool, letting her feet dangle in the cold, chlorinated water as she grins and watches Rachel surface. 

She can feel Rose watching her, can feel her frown.

“C’mon in,” Rachel says when she wades over, hanging onto the edge right beside Adrianne’s thigh, her eyeliner runny and still somehow badass. “It feels so amazing. Especially after--”

“I don’t want to,” Adrianne interrupts, fighting the urge to blush for what Rachel might’ve said. “You go ahead though. I’ll stay right here, okay?”

Other people might have tried to force her, might have spent more time trying to talk her into it, but Rachel just smiles and shrugs, leaning back and kicking away from her with her feet on the wall of the pool, sticking her tongue out at Adrianne before she goes back under.

Incubus is playing now, and Adrianne can tell that Sawyer is the one picking the music. There’s movement on Adrianne’s left, and suddenly Rose is there, her red hair damp and dripping around her shoulders that are maddeningly freckled over the tan she gets from her Nicaraguan mother, her beautiful mouth tugged down into a frown.

They’re quiet for a minute, and Adrianne can’t help but watch Rose’s sparkly silver toes glisten under the water.

“Where have you been?” Rose asks, and it sounds cold, accusatory, like she already Knows. Adrianne’s heart speeds up, but she keeps her face relaxed, doesn’t let any of the fear of Rose finding out come anywhere near the surface.

“Just talking to Sawyer’s friend, Rachel. She had a CD in the car she wanted me to listen to.” It sounds convincing, just boring enough to be true, and she punctuates it with a lift of her shoulder. “It’s not a big deal. You were plenty busy without me here, right?”

What she means to say is _are you having fun?_ or _did you miss me?_ , and the anger she can feel radiating off of Rose immediately makes her regret that she didn’t think before she fucking spoke, that she feels so daring and cool after having sex for the first time that she let herself forget who she’s talking to, who they are to each other. She opens her mouth to apologize, but Rose beats her to it.

“This is my _birthday_ , Annie. It doesn’t matter if there are a hundred people at my party. You’re my _best friend_. You’re the one I want to hang out with the most. You’re the one I have the most fun with. I can’t believe you said that. That’s so not fair.” Rose is worked up and upset in a way that has tears shining in her eyes and her cheeks pink with embarrassment and fury, and she scuffs her ankle on the concrete edge of the pool in her hurry to stand up, bringing blood to the surface immediately.

“Rose--” Adrianne starts, already trying to beg forgiveness, her chest feeling like it’s caving in around her heart at the look on Rose’s face. She looks down at her ankle and feels like crying, like she’d hurt Rose herself.

“It’s fine, Annie. Have fun with your new friend. I’ll be fine.” 

It’s so unlike Rose, this kind of outburst, this kind of jealousy, and Adrianne finds herself doubled down over her legs, her jaw clenched as she fights to hide the bright burn of tears in her own eyes.

“Who is that?” Rachel says, beside Adrianne suddenly and speaking soft enough that even Adrianne can barely hear her.

“Rose,” Adrianne replies morosely, her eyes dull. “My best friend.”

“Mm,” is all Rachel says, not speaking for several beats before she climbs up out of the water and wrings her hair out. “C’mon, kid. Let’s go stuff our faces.”

Adrianne doesn’t watch as Rose plays chicken against Julie and Brad on Sawyer’s shoulders, her lovely, thin legs on either side of Adrianne’s brother’s stupid head, his hands on her thighs, his idiot laugh sounding out as she leans forward and tries to topple Julie, her squealing, happy laughter doing nothing to ease the pain in Adrianne’s heart, the knot in her gut. 

The pizza tastes like ash in her mouth. 

 

Rachel and Sawyer leave with their friends after it gets dark and most of the kids are picked up by their parents, only a handful of girls making the cut to stay the night for a sleepover. There’s a debate on what movie they want to watch, and Rose forgoes the horror flick she’d normally pick if it was just Adrianne staying over and chooses _10 Things I Hate About You_ , appeasing most everyone in the room all at once.

Rose spends the first hour of the movie on the floor next to Blythe and Erin, sharing some pita bread-hummus thing that Erin made sure everybody knew she brought to have instead of the pizza and chips everybody else ate. Adrianne is curled up alone and on the other side of the living room from the couch and the loveseat and the rest of the girls, dressed in plaid boxer shorts that belonged to Sawyer once and a faded AC/DC shirt that had been her dad’s when he was her age. She’s eating a package of peanut M&M’s she’d found in her bag, sucking on them one by one until she gets to the peanut and trying very hard to pay attention to the movie and not to the fake way Rose is talking and laughing and the proprietary way Erin is touching her, stroking her hair and sighing enviously over Rose’s unique combination of freckles and dark skin.

Adrianne keeps her eyes planted on Kat Stratford on the big screen TV in Rose’s sprawling living room and tries to stave off the anxiety attack pulling at her chest and whispering to her that Rose is angry at her, that she’s slowly but surely replacing her, that she’s losing the most important person in her life.

She’s worked herself up into a silent frenzy, her hands clutched up tight around the M&M’s that are now melting in the package under her hot palms, and her teeth are gritted hard in her mouth while tears burn in her eyes. She can’t take in a full breath, can’t seem to breathe very well at all, and she’s almost to the point of jumping up and running up to Rose’s room to let this attack run its course in relative safety, but Rose is here, sudden and completely unexpected.

Her Rose, right here.

She’s tiny, well under five feet tall and lighter than Adrianne has been in years, so the chair barely moves when Rose climbs up into it and in front of Adrianne, wedging herself in the scant space left in a recliner meant for one person. 

Rose is wearing a nightgown, a little summer one that’s yellow with pink flowers on it, that barely comes past her upper thighs, that has lacy little straps and leaves her mostly bare and so soft and warm against Adrianne’s front, so perfectly small and exactly right for Adrianne, no matter how tall she gets herself.

Rose nestles back against her, an olive branch of a movement, and Adrianne accepts with her whole gushing, bloody heart by wrapping Rose up in her arms and nestling her face into the pool-scented thickness of Rose’s auburn hair, lost in the smell of her, the heat of her, the idea of her existence.

And maybe it’s right then that she realizes it, that she notes the difference between this and whatever that was with Rachel, no matter how good it had been. This right here, with Rose, this is real. This is what vows are made for, this is the feeling people have when they think of death-do-us-part, this is not a crush or a childish love or a projection. Nothing so naive as that. 

This is love. She’s in love with Rose. She loves her; loves her the way songs mean, the way people feel when they commit crimes of passion, loves her in the way that shatters people when they get their hearts broken. That’s what this is.

She knows it, knows it beyond any hesitation. It terrifies her, the futility of it. The knowledge that Rose couldn’t feel the same way, or she’d know it by now. She would have seen it already in her eyes. Would’ve felt it on one of those forever nights they’ve had, like tonight. She would know because Rose would turn to look at her and it would be a moment before a kiss, it would be silent words that don’t exist in any other language except the one spoken between two people’s bodies who are in love. And that’s not what this is. That’s not what Rose feels.

Rose relaxes in Adrianne’s arms and lets Adrianne hold her, lets Adrianne love her. She eats the M&M’s softened by Adrianne’s body heat and falls asleep her first night as a thirteen-year-old in Adrianne’s arms while Letters to Cleo sings on the roof of Padua High during the credits. No one else is awake but Adrianne, and she’s so devoted to holding onto this night, this moment, that she doesn’t sleep.

 

Adrianne is sitting cross-legged on her bed, listening to Anti-Flag and ten pages from the end of _Youth in Revolt_ when there’s a knock on her bedroom door.

She puts a finger on the last sentence she read and lifts her head.

“What?”

“Are you naked?”

Adrianne rolls her eyes.

“No, asshat.”

Sawyer opens the door, his long blond hair shaggy and hanging in his face. He grins big and bright, holding up a thin CD case like a prize.

Adrianne stares at him blankly, showing the thinnest amount of patience she possibly can.

“Words, dude. Use your words.”

“Rach wanted me to give you this,” he finally sighs, leaning in and tossing the CD toward the bed, not wanting to step foot in Adrianne’s territory. She catches it with both hands, her face all hot as she turns it over and stares at the silver disc in the clear case, the words ‘For Adri’ written in sharpie above a list of songs in two columns, the words small and careful.

The Red Aunts, L7, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Team Dresch, Babes in Toyland, Heavens to Betsy, The Butchies, and on and on and on. Some bands she’s heard of in a vague way, maybe from seeing CDs at the record shop or on t-shirts, but every song on here will be new for her, will be a discovery. 

“It’s just some weird chick music,” Sawyer snorts, rolling his eyes and retreating to the hallway, his hand on the doorknob. Adrianne lifts her head and looks at him with as much disdain as she can muster on such short notice, absently opening the case and plucking the CD free.

“You can go now,” she replies, stretching out on the bed and hitting eject on _Die for the Government_ and dropping her custom-made playlist from the girl who gave her head last weekend onto the tray and pushing it closed.

She can feel Sawyer lingering in the door, can tell that he wants to say more to her, but he finally just yanks the door closed behind him. Adrianne holds her breath to listen to the sounds of his feet clomping down the hall, and she doesn’t push play on the CD until his bedroom door closes.

The music starts up, and she settles back against the pillow, her eyes falling closed as her ears fill with new sound.

 

\---

 

It’s a quiet truce between Adrianne and her Rose for the rest of the summer, and they don’t talk about that day or that night ever again.

It’s late August and the air is broken at Adrianne’s apartment, making the five-mile bike ride across town to Rose’s house so worth it when she feels the first blast of cold air coming up from the vent next to Rose’s bed.

Two bottles of water and a frozen pizza later, and Adrianne is feeling vaguely human again, feeling well enough to venture into Rose’s dad’s study and grab the acoustic guitar always propped up in the corner next to the bookcase.

Her own, borrowed guitar is at home, too bulky to transport on a bicycle.

She feels a little shy when she comes back into the bedroom and Rose smiles at her, sweet and indulgent, like something Adrianne’s doing is cute.

And Adrianne is _not cute._

“It’s out of tune,” she says under her breath as she nestles between the pillows and leans back against the headboard. She fidgets with the tuning pegs with her limited knowledge before fishing the guitar pick out of her pocket that she’s started keeping there, one she’d lifted from the music store downtown and fidgets with whenever she’s nervous.

Rose watches her without speaking, pen poised above her pink moleskine notebook in her tummy-down sprawl on the bed, her bare feet tipped up and crossed behind her, swaying lazily in the air.

Her toes are pink, carnation pink, dotted with white speckles that she’d painted on so carefully just an hour ago. They make Adrianne think of Rose’s little bikini from her pool party, the one she’s mentally plucked from Rose’s body dozens of times to get to the skin underneath.

Adrianne’s are black.

Uncle Donnie had stayed with them for a couple of weeks, and he’d brought his guitar with him, his prized possession since he was sixteen. Adrianne had fallen in love with it and had swallowed her pride long enough to all but beg her uncle to teach her to play. Before he left, he’d given Adrianne the guitar, telling her she could keep it as long as she practiced.

She’d done nothing else for the last month.

She strums quiet and hesitant in front of Rose, hyper-aware of the fact that she’s never done this in front of anybody but Donnie, of the fact that Rose is watching her, hasn’t taken her eyes off of her since she came back in the room, but most of all she’s aware of her own limitations and her nearly pathological desire to impress her best friend.

“You’re really good,” Rose says after about ten minutes of random chords while Adrianne works up the courage to start playing something she’s been working on the last few days. Adrianne glances up at Rose from beneath her lashes, her smile sheepish and more than a little proud.

“Nah, I’m just learning. Can’t do much of anything yet.”

She looks back down at the guitar to hide how pleased she is, and she wonders how she looks to Rose, if Rose thinks she’s beautiful right now, if she thinks she’s unique and creative and amazing, or if she thinks Adrianne is adorably pathetic, kinda like a puppy who wants to show off his new trick but just ends up pissing on the carpet instead.

She shuts her brain off, takes a deep breath, and focuses on making the notes cleaner, sharper. The song starts to come out in spite of herself, whether she wants to play it right now or not.

She’d been thinking about Rose when she started writing it, of course.

There’s no telling how much time passes, but she becomes aware at some point that Rose is humming along, that she’s abandoned her notebook and tucked her pen between its pages and is now sitting up in a tangle of her lovely little legs and watching Adrianne with unabashed interest. 

Rose’s voice, even when she’s just humming, is absolutely enchanting.

It’s sweet as a little girl’s and clear with a natural vibrato, and she’s somehow picked out a melody that lays perfectly over the notes Adrianne’s playing, that dips down to harmonize with the guitar every so often.

Adrianne nearly stops playing in her surprise, but she forces herself to continue, looking up now to watch Rose right back, the connective joy growing and growing between them until they’ve both grinning so hard they can’t help but stop and laugh.

“That was so awesome!” Adrianne exclaims, clutching the pick against her palm as her heart races dangerously fast in her chest. “Rose, _your voice._ ”

“Oh, god.” Redheads blush the best, and Rose looks just like summer as she shakes her head and her pink cheeks darken. “No, it’s just… I mean, you make it so easy. That’s so pretty, Annie. Is that a song of yours?”

“The only one I have,” Adrianne admits with a lift of her shoulder. “I’m shit at lyrics. I just have the sounds of a song in my head, and all I can do is pick ‘em out on the guitar, you know?”

“Can I try?” Rose asks, reaching over for her notebook again and hugging it hopefully against her chest. She looks so eager, so truly happy to be right here with Adrianne doing exactly this, and Adrianne knows that she couldn’t deny Rose anything in the world. Nothing at all.

“Of course,” she manages to say.

Rose beams and scrambles up the length of the bed to settle against the headboard beside Adrianne, leaving enough room for her arms to move, but she drapes her legs over Adrianne’s, both of them looking at and noticing how much shorter Rose’s legs are, how much smaller her feet.

Adrianne swears she can feel the exact shape of her heart.

“Ready?”

Rose nods, grabbing up her pen and scratching something quick in the margin next to one of her long, unknowable poems.

 

They’ve written a song, more or less, by the time night falls.

The window is open to let a little of summer in, a rushed scent of mowed grass and the trilling song of cicadas, and they’re laying side by side on Rose’s bed, sharing a pillow and staring at the stars glowing on the ceiling.

“We should start a band,” Rose says softly while they both drift off to sleep. Adrianne smiles, feeling the proposal like it was the marrying kind.

“ _Totally_ ,” she whispers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrianne and Rose at sweet sixteen.

**2004**

 

“Just hold still.”

“I’m _trying_ ,” Adrianne grits out, her eyes squeezed shut tight, and there’s not a muscle in her body moving except her heart. 

“Deep breath in--”

Her flat tummy expands, and then her right nipple explodes with pain.

“Fuck!”

“Hold still!”

“Am I bleeding?”

“Like a stuck fucking pig, _don’t move_.”

Adrianne whines, soft and impatient, licking her lips over and over again as Rachel fucks around with her tit, slowly pulling the needle out and fitting the metal bar piercing in. She finally breathes when everything goes still, a low throb setting in as Rachel tightens the threaded ball on one side with a pair of pliers from Adrianne’s dad’s toolbox.

Rachel sits back and wipes the sweat off her forehead with the side of one gloved hand, flashing Adrianne a big grin.

“One down, one to go.”

Adrianne groans and relaxes back against the wall, letting the cool of it seep into her burning skin. She sighs, accepting her fate.

“How does it look?” she asks.

“Fucking hot,” Rachel tells her, tossing the needle into the trash and reaching for another one, opening it with a practiced pull. “I wanna suck on it.”

“But it’s bleeding,” Adrianne replies, dabbing at her newly pierced nipple with the paper towel Rachel hands her.

“Even better,” Rachel says with a lewd wink that makes Adrianne smirk, makes something dark uncurl in her belly, a reminder that it’s okay to like gross shit, to want to try nasty, fucked up things. She reaches for the bottle of water on the window sill and takes a long drink of it before handing it over to Rachel.

“Have you ever gone down on a girl while she was on her period?”

Rachel is Adrianne’s worldly and wise dykemaster, and usually, if Rachel hasn’t done something, she at least knows of a chick who has. She gets the clamps ready and reaches out to pull at Adrianne’s nipple, getting it nice and stiff and long so she can clamp it down. Adrianne grits her teeth and closes her eyes again.

“Yeah, one girl.” The clamp tightens and hangs heavy while Rachel readies the needle. “A girl I dated last summer for awhile. Do you remember Malyka?”

Of fucking course Adrianne remembers Malyka. Turquoise fro, septum piercing, a moon tattooed around her navel. 

“She was fucking beautiful,” Adrianne says with a sigh.

“Moved to Missoula to go to college. She’s probably engaged to some frat guy now.” Adrianne can feel Rachel’s frown. “Deep breath.”

Adrianne obeys and nearly bites her lip off when the second needle pierces her skin. 

“Anyway, she really liked having her pussy eaten. Like… was a total diva about it. If I went a whole day without eating her out, she’d fuckin’ pout about it.” She pauses while she slides the bar in, only resuming when the ball was tightened into place. “So when she was on the rag…”

Rachel shrugs, leaning back as she pulls her gloves off and reaches for the bottle of water.

“I was a pussy vampire,” she finishes with a loud gulp.

Adrianne just stares at her in amazement, not even reacting when Rachel starts to wipe her tits down with cold water.

“So… what did it taste like?”

“Like when you accidentally bite the inside of your cheek. Only a fuck of a lot more of it. Really salty because of her come, too.” Rachel trails off and stares at the Babes in Toyland show poster over Adrianne’s head, looking thoughtful. “It wasn’t bad. It was actually hot as fuck.”

Adrianne adds it to her mental lesbian bucket list as she stands up and walks over to the mirror and stares at her reflection, at her splotchy, tight sixteen-year-old tits with brand new bars shoved through them. She grins.

“You did an amazing job,” she tells Rachel, glancing back over at her as she cups her own breasts, pushing them up and closer together until it aches.

“Course I did,” Rachel says, standing up from the bed and unbuttoning her jeans. Her hair is a black cherry red now that hits just below her chin, her bangs short and thick, a total 90s alt-girl haircut. She’d done it herself, of course. She shucks her jeans and her underwear in one go, motioning for Adrianne to get back on the bed. “C’mon. A deal’s a deal.”

Adrianne sighs with a fair amount of drama, but her mouth is already watering as she climbs back on her bed and lays back carefully, getting her head centered on the pillow.

“If you bump into my tits, I’m gonna bite your clit off.”

“My ass isn’t _that_ big,” Rachel laughs as she climbs up on her, field hockey player thighs straddling Adrianne’s head. She looks up at the pussy spread out a couple of inches from her face, turned on immediately by the sight of it, by the familiar, earthy scent of Rachel’s cunt.

She runs her hands up Rachel’s thighs and gives her soft belly a squeeze as she finally sits down on Adrianne’s face, smothering her in pussy and riding her lapping, eager tongue.

They’re really good at bartering.

 

\---

 

Adrianne ditches fourth period and meets up with Rachel and Ruby at Culture Clash Records, a little flustered because her car stalls out at a light two blocks away from the record shop. She rushes in pulling her love-softened flannel over her tanktop, no bra to hold her in, so her newly pierced and healed piercings are visible through the paper thin, grey cotton.

“Thought you got lost,” Rach says from the back near the recording equipment and instruments, her hand out to give Adrianne a bro-shake and hug when she jogs back there. Ruby stands just as tall as Adrianne but weighs about thirty pounds less, her thin dancer body wrapped up tight in what look like ballet practice clothes. She watches Adrianne with forced casual interest, not really wanting her girlfriend to know that she can never take her eyes off of Rach’s sixteen-year-old friend every time they’re around each other.

Adrianne kind of loves the attention.

“Sorry, my car is fucked. Transmission or something.” She glances at Ruby and gives her a brief smile, more than a little obsessed with Ruby’s purple contacts and her thick, straight black hair braided and draped over one shoulder. 

(How does Rach _find_ these girls?)

“No worries. Just wanted to see what you thought about these drums.” Rachel leads Adrianne over to a 5-piece Pearl drum set, all black, even the cymbal and the hi-hat. Ruby tags along behind them, smelling like flowers and incense and definitely distracting Adrianne from what she’s supposed to be doing.

“Um,” Adrianne starts, arms folded over her chest as she circles the drums, finally looking up at Rachel with a shrug. “They’re cool, I guess? I dunno. I know shit about drums.”

“Sit down behind ‘em. See what you think.” Rachel steps back and wraps an arm around Ruby’s tiny waist, nodding at the seat situated right in the middle of the drumkit. She looks secretive and weirdly expectant, and Adrianne frowns at her the whole way to the stool. She sits down on it and finally looks down at the drums, feeling a little at a loss about what she should do.

“They’re… sturdy?” she manages.

“What if I told you I know a guy who would give you lessons for free?” Rachel sounds exactly like a used car salesman, and suddenly this whole fucking thing has Adrianne’s hackles up. She jumps up from the drums and circles back around until she’s standing next to them again, hands on her hips this time.

“What the hell are you trying to do?” she asks, not really caring that Rachel is on the clock and there are customers in here. Ruby watches her with nervous, flickering eyes, her cheeks flushed pink.

Rachel sighs, letting go of Ruby and taking a step towards Adrianne.

“Babe, you--”

“Don’t call me--”

“You know I’ve been playing guitar since I was eleven. Right? And I’m _really_ good. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

Both Adrianne and Ruby raise their eyebrows at that. Rachel stops, smirks.

“Well, one of the _few_ things I’m good at. If we’re really gonna do this, if we’re going to try and start this band, we have to be realistic. Having only two guitarists isn’t having a band.”

“But I don’t _play drums_!” Adrianne protests.

“But you _can!_ You can so fuckin’ do it. Here.” She digs into her back pocket and hands Adrianne a bent-up business card. “Stan’s phone number. He’s a friend. Cool guy. He owes me big, so he agreed to do this for us. If you’ll just try.”

Adrianne stares down at the card for a long moment before glancing warily at the drums.

“I’m not sucking his dick,” she says.

“He’s just as queer as we are,” Rach promises, holding in her joy for all of five seconds before she launches herself at Adrianne and hugs her tight around the waist, squeezing her until Adrianne grunts. “This is gonna be so fuckin’ awesome, Adri! Fuck. We can so do this!”

“What about the drums? I can’t afford anything like that. Half my paycheck goes toward groceries, and I’ve gotta get my car fixed--”

“Don’t worry about that. I get a discount, and these are being held for us. I’m making payments on ‘em. And Ruby’s helping too, aren’t you, kitten?”

Adrianne looks over at Ruby, her eyes widening.

“I wanna support the band,” Ruby says with that soft little voice of hers that makes Adrianne want to sprout a ten-inch dick and pulverize her cunt with it. 

Rachel’s manager comes up from the back, smelling of bologna and cigarettes from his break, and Adrianne tenses at the way he looks back and forth between her and Ruby with unchecked lust in his eyes.

“Rach, are you helping these young ladies?”

“We were just looking for Tom Jones. This fine employee of yours helped us.” Adrianne flashes Rachel an exaggerated grin. “Thank you, miss!”

The slobbery bastard leers at them a little longer before he waddles to the front, letting out a juicy burp that makes Adrianne shudder.

“Will you give Ruby a ride home?” Rachel asks under her breath, reaching out to squeeze Adrianne’s hand pleadingly. “I was hoping he’d fall asleep in his car and I could duck out early, but I--”

“Don’t worry,” Adrianne assures her with her most innocent smile. “I’ll take care of her.”

 

Half an hour later, Adrianne’s got three fingers tucked into Ruby’s tight pussy, and she’s wringing out her second orgasm in ten minutes. It’s sopping wet and slurpy-loud, and her clit is so fucking cute and tiny that Adrianne wants to chew on it.

“Give it to me,” she whispers, shoving Ruby’s long ballerina leg back so far that her toes catch on the drooping ceiling of Adri’s Accord, keeping her spread wide open as she drips all over Adrianne’s backseat.

Just the hint of her teeth on Ruby’s clit has her sobbing and riding Adrianne’s hand as she creams her already wrinkled fingers, her little car squeaking on its hinges while Ruby convulses, lashes fluttering, only the whites of her eyes showing.

She collapses back against the seat, dripping with sweat and slick and panting as she stares up at Adrianne in dazed wonder.

“I knew you’d be amazing,” Ruby sighs, reaching down to rub at Adrianne’s wrist as she massages at Ruby’s insides, keeping her cunt nice and relaxed. “I’ve wanted you for months, and--”

“This is the only time this is gonna happen,” Adrianne tells her, leaning down to fumble through the trash and clothes on the floorboard and come up with a miniature wooden bat that she’d won at the county fair last summer; too small to be useful in any way except as something to keep in her car and fight off would-be rapists with.

Or so she thought.

“So we’re gonna see how far I can get this inside of you, and if you can suck it in nice and tight and let me see it through your belly, I promise I’ll make it so good, you’ll cry.” 

Ruby stares at her with big, violet babydoll eyes, her swollen petal mouth chewed raw and slick as she opens it up and takes the tip of the 18-inch bat past her lips to wet it.

With the first few inches lubed up, Adrianne spreads Ruby’s pussylips and nestles the blunt head of it right against her tiny cunt.

“You’ve got the pussy of an eight-year-old,” Adrianne tells her warmly, dragging her thumb over Ruby’s clit as she gives the bat its first push in, forcing it into Ruby’s soaked tightness and starting the long, patient drive inside of her.

It takes almost an hour, and there’s a little blood, but Ruby officially passes out from coming so hard with most of a two-foot bat nestled in her cunt while Adrianne shoves the handle inside of herself and uses her tight muscles to grip it so she can fuck it deeper into Ruby, staring obsessively at the swollen outline of the bat in her sucked-in, starved belly, running her fingers over and over the protrusion as she comes herself, growling so loud and for so long that she all but loses her voice.

She has to carry Ruby into her apartment, and she leaves before the desire to get back between her legs gets the best of her.

She struts a little on her way up the stairs to her own apartment, and she fumbles with the keys because of her pussy-pruny fingers and the fact that her hand is cramped, and god _damn_ , what a good problem to have.

Rose is standing beside the couch when Adrianne finally gets the door open, her freckled face stained red, her eyes wide and zeroed in on Adrianne who just kind of stops and stares, keys hanging from a crooked finger.

“Rosey?” she asks, head tipped to the side like a dog, her voice low and hoarse from letting her inner Daddy out earlier. Sawyer pops up from the couch and squints at Adrianne over the back of it before flopping back down, out of sight.

“Close the door, dumbass. Don’t let Big Mike out.”

“Don’t call her that,” Rose says as if by instinct, shooting a glare at Sawyer before turning her attention to Adrianne. “Hey, Annie! I just came over to see if you’re okay. I couldn’t find you after school.”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” She closes the door with a kick and drops her bag beside it, heading into the kitchen for a bottle of water. “How long have you been here?”

“Fifteen minutes or--”

“About an hour,” Sawyer interrupts, a disembodied voice that makes Adrianne pause in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, her eyebrows raised at Rose who just stands there, staring at her helplessly.

“Yeah, about an hour, I guess. I was about to just leave, but Big Mike wanted to play, so I chased him around for awhile.” Rose gives Adrianne one of those smiles that goes straight to her heart and between her legs, and she feels the twin-throb in both places at the sight of it. A glance over at Big Mike snoring on the recliner tells Adrianne that the silly mutt hasn’t done much of anything for awhile, and the lie settles weird in Adrianne’s belly, makes her feel hot all over and nauseous.

“Cool,” she manages, not really sure how to deal with Rose lying to her, or _why_ she would. “Well, I’ve got homework, so I guess I’m gonna--”

“Yeah, I’ve gotta get home, too. Mom’s probably got dinner made.” Rose grabs her fringy black purse off the kitchen table and the keys to her beloved ‘69 Chevy Nova that she calls Elvira that Adri somehow failed to see out in the parking lot in her post-fuck daze. 

Sawyer stays quiet as Rose heads for the door and says some quiet goodbyes, and Adrianne stays where she is for a very long time, bottle of water dangling from her fingers, the TV blaring loud about customizing street racer cars.

She doesn’t like her brother on their best days, but today, she wants to go back out to her car and get her pussy-soaked bat and bash his fucking head in with it. The impulse is strong and inexplicable, and Adrianne grabs her bag and hurries to her bedroom, making sure to slam the door. 

 

\---

 

She and Rose used to be together every possible second of every day. Between classes, at lunch, after school, on the weekends. Middle school had made them into phone addicts, had seen them spending hours and hours with a receiver attached to their ears, either watching TV together over the phone or playing each other songs or talking about whatever random thing they found worthy of conversation. Whatever it was, and no matter what, they were together, somehow.

Adrianne realizes halfway through a cold, sleeting Saturday afternoon in late November that she hasn’t talked to Rose since lunch at school yesterday. She’s heating up a Hot Pocket when it occurs to her, and she stares in at it in something akin to horror, not even reacting when the microwave dings.

She grabs the cordless off the kitchen counter and hits speed dial two, tucking the phone against her ear as she opens the microwave.

Rose answers on the third ring.

“Hey, babe.”

Adrianne nearly drops her Hot Pocket.

“Uh. Hi?”

There’s a weird pause on the other end of the phone and then Rose is laughing, sweet and intensely familiar. Adrianne tosses the stupid pepperoni thing on a paper towel and closes her eyes, gripping the edge of the counter and letting the sound of that laugh echo in her head.

“Sorry, I’m hyper,” Rose says, the fact of her smile so evident through the phone that Adrianne swears she can hear her dimples. “What’s up?”

“N-Nothing, I guess.” Adrianne hops up onto the counter and drags her lunch into her lap, breaking it apart to let the heat out. “I just… haven’t talked to you in awhile.”

It settles like a rock in her stomach, how much she misses her, and she pushes the Hot Pocket aside, suddenly not hungry anymore.

“It’s okay. I was out with Daddy while he shopped for a new car. He thinks Mom is really bad at choosing cars, so he brought me.” A pause. “She always wants a convertible, and Daddy tells her it’s ridiculous to have a convertible in Ohio, blah, blah, blah.”

Adrianne grins, leaning back against the cabinet, savoring the way that Rose is talking to her; like things aren’t weird or strained, like they’re who they’ve always been.

“So, what did he end up getting?”

“Oh, nothing yet. I liked the Ferrari.”

Adrianne snorts, reaching over to pluck a piece of pepperoni from the little calzone.

“You little shit.”

Another laugh, this one relaxed, like Rose has settled back on her bed. Adrianne can’t help but picture her, but want to climb right on top of her and taste her smile. 

It’s awful. Awful.

“I know, I know. Anyway. What’ve you been up to? Anything fun?”

“Not really. Finished my Econ paper. Watched about forty episodes of _America’s Next Top Model_.”

“Did you cry?”

Adrianne gives a surprised bark of laughter and covers her mouth with her hand while she chews her first bite, cheese hanging out of one side that she has to lick up.

“Fuck you,” she garbles.

“You always cry,” Rose teases, the words like a tickle along Adrianne’s ribs. “It’s so cute.”

“Why did I ever tell you that?” Adrianne sighs. Half the Hot Pocket is gone, and she reaches for the other part.

“Because you like to show me your sensitive side.”

“The only sensitive part of me is my clit,” she replies before she even thinks about it, and her eyes widen in horror when she realizes. She covers her mouth again, her cheeks fat with half-chewed food.

She’s definitely been hanging out with Rachel too much.

“Annie!” Rose gasps, but it’s an inhale that erupts into giggles that floods Adrianne with relief, that lets her swallow her food in relative safety. “You’re in a mood! Hey, you wanna come over tonight? We can watch _Hostel_ again.”

“Oh,” Adrianne breathes, caught off-guard by the invite but mostly by how much she wants to cancel all her plans and do just that. “I… shit. I can’t. I’m going to a show tonight.”

“Oh. Well. Okay. That’s okay. I can just--”

“Do you wanna come?” Maybe she sounds like a pathetic mix of desperate and hopeful, but she always has been when it comes to this girl. “It’s just a local show at the Black Cherry. An all-girl kinda grunge band?”

“I didn’t know there were still grunge bands,” Rose says, and Adrianne takes it for the _yes_ it is, her smile so big, it hurts her face.

“Oh, honey. There will _always_ be grunge bands.”

 

Adri spends two hours choosing an outfit that will look like she just climbed out of bed. She decides on punkboy skinny black jeans, beat-up Chelsea boots that belonged to her uncle Donnie back in the day, and a white muscle tee with a faded picture of The Breeders on it, her tits taped down under a sports bra beneath. She dyed her hair black just before school started up again, and it’s shorter than she’s ever had it, all chopped up in an ultra-gay, overgrown pixie cut.

She rims her eyes with some Wet ‘n’ Wild liner to make the blue of them look almost haunting, and she pulls on her prize possession on the way out the door: her dad’s black motorcycle jacket from the 80s. Fuck. Yeah.

It takes her ‘92 Accord three tries to start, and she cranks the heat on the way to the Black Cherry, wishing Rose would’ve let Adrianne pick her up instead of insisting on driving herself. Elvira is a tank, but the ice on the roads makes Adrianne worry about the ten miles between Rose’s house and the club.

Nevermind the fact that Rose’s Nova has massive, sturdy tires on it while Adrianne’s are practically bald and skid on bone-dry pavement.

The place is packed by the time she gets there, everybody outside bundled up against the Ohio early winter, half of them smoking, all of them eyeing every single newcomer to size them up into two categories: fuckable or unfuckable.

Adrianne can tell at a glance that nearly all of them are guys, so she doesn’t give them another look as she heads for the door with an exaggerated swagger and a cigarette hanging from her lips. She can feel eyes on her, can hear murmurs from a few people about how hot she is, and she’s nearly preening when she hears the most familiar voice in the world rise up over the noise.

“Annie!”

She stops and turns immediately, plucking the cigarette from her mouth and trying to hide it as Rose comes running up to her with a red, beaming smile.

Adri’s girl has fallen hard into the whole pop-punk scene, and her studded belt, tight jeans, and Sum 41 t-shirt under a thin denim jacket has Adrianne biting back a grin. Rose comes to a stop in front of her, standing a good 8 inches shorter than Adrianne herself, and Adrianne takes the time to look Rose over, to take in her layers of tattoo chokers and her careful cat-flicked eyes, and the--

Her eyes widen in alarm.

“What the hell is that?!”

Rose looks confused before she seems to remember. She reaches up to touch her bottom lip, fingers lighting on the black ring looped on the left side of it.

“Oh, it’s fake! Don’t worry. Daddy would kill me.”

She pulls on it to show Adrianne the way it moves, and Adri lets out a sigh of relief as she throws an arm around Rose’s shoulders and guides her to the door, absently ashing her cigarette in the trashed gravel.

“You scared the shit out of me.” She glances over and down at Rose, lamenting how short Rose’s hair is, the way it’s cut and sliced in varying layers and flat-ironed down, all her soft curls gone in favor of looking something like Avril Lavigne. “Did you bring anything warmer to wear? You’re gonna freeze when we leave.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve got my own personal heater.” She wraps both of her arms around Adrianne’s waist and tucks her face against the side of Adrianne’s breast, nestling into the small pillow of it.

Adrianne hands over twenty of her hard-earned dollars from the Bojangles to pay their cover charge and walks in with Rose wrapped around her, feeling like a fucking rockstar with this beautiful girl hanging all over her. She makes eye contact with everyone looking at them as they wade through the crowd, soaking in their surprise and envy and really, really hoping that they all think Rose is her girlfriend.

“Who’s that skinny bitch?”

The voice is so loud that several people around her stop talking, and Adrianne spins around with Rose in tow to face Rachel who is already halfway to being shit-faced and grinning at Adrianne, a pretty young thing of her own tucked up snug under her arm.

“This place is packed tonight,” Adrianne says by way of a greeting, letting her eyes drag over the beautiful little Israeli girl surgically attached to Rachel, making sure to meet her eyes to let the girl know that Adrianne thinks she’s fucking cute.

“Not everyday Rehymenated plays here. They’ve been touring, I guess. Did a whole run of the East Coast.” Rachel reaches out and plucks the cigarette from behind Adrianne’s ear and lights it herself without asking, her dark eyes sliding several inches down from Adrianne’s to land on Rose.

Adrianne feels a low, heavy ball of dread start to form in her belly.

“And who’s this?” Rachel asks, like she doesn’t know. Like she doesn’t have to hear about Rose every fucking day of her life. She gives Rose a tight once-over and smirks up at Adrianne, a playful challenge.

“Uh, Rachel, this is Rose. Rose, this is my friend Rachel. She came to your birthday party a few years back?”

“I remember,” Rose says, so quiet that the words are almost lost, and Adrianne can tell without looking at her that Rose is unhappy. One of her small hands clutches up tight on the back of Adrianne’s jacket, and Adrianne feels an overwhelming rush of protectiveness wash over her.

“I can’t believe I’m finally getting to meet Rose. _The_ Rose. You’re like a mythical fucking creature, if you listen to Adrianne talk. I thought you were a unicorn. Or maybe just something Adri made up to sound cool.”

Adrianne glares daggers at her, wanting to rear back and kick the shit out of her with the tip of one of her pointy boots. She snugs Rose in closer, practically forcing her against her chest, and she and Rachel have known each other long enough for their entire silent conversation to last all of a few seconds.

“That’s sweet,” Rose finally says, but it seems to take every last ounce of her remaining politeness. She stirs at Adrianne’s side, lifting her head to give Adri an almost pleading smile. “Hey, I’m gonna go grab a drink. You want anything?”

Adrianne reaches into her pocket for the small wad of cash there, about to pull off a ten and hand it to Rose before Rose untangles from her with a shake of her head.

“Nope! My turn. Want a Dr. Pepper?”

Rachel laughs, good-natured and honestly amused, but Adrianne watches with regret as Rose flushes but refuses to look at Rachel.

“Yeah,” Adrianne replies, making sure her smile is big and real because Rose will be able to tell if it’s not. “That sounds awesome.”

Rose flashes one more smile, her big, dark eyes jumping for a single second to Rachel before she disappears into the crowd, headed toward the bar.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a flask. That’s so cute that she comes here and orders pop. God, she’s fucking juicy, isn’t she?” Rachel pushes up onto her tiptoes to try and see Rose in the crowd, and Adrianne steps in against her, using the couple of inches of height she has on Rachel to tower over her.

“Listen,” she says, low and gruff, her hand twisting in Rachel’s wifebeater, not even glancing over when Rach’s girl detaches from her and takes a few steps back, “I know you think this is really fucking funny, but it’s not. Rose is a good fucking person, and she doesn’t need to feel like shit about that because some dickhead thinks it’s cool to make people feel bad. Just fucking cool it and treat her like a human being, you hear me?”

“Jesus, Palicki, calm the fuck down.” Rachel isn’t smiling anymore, and anger surges up onto her face as she yanks herself out of Adrianne’s grip and pulls on her shirt to fix it. “I was just teasing her. I didn’t know your girl was so fucking precious.”

“Well, she is.” Adrianne can feel the adrenaline rushing through her, can tell by the way her hands are shaking at her sides and the way her jaw is set and her eyes are focused and her heart is pounding that she would absolutely ruin a friendship right here, tonight, if she had to. “Leave her alone.”

They stare at each other, horns locked and wedged tight, and there must be something vulnerable in Adrianne’s eyes because Rachel finally sighs, rubbing a hand over her face and smearing her eternally-present eyeliner.

“Alright, man. I’m sorry, okay? I’ll lay off her. Are we good?”

Adrianne hesitates, surprised at how fast Rachel backed down, at how fucking violent she feels. She snatches her cigarette back and takes a drag, exhaling it through her nose in a careful, calming sigh.

“Yeah,” she says after a minute. “We’re good.”

“Annie!” Rose is there with a glass of Dr. Pepper with a red straw and a bottle of water, and her babydoll eyes are comically wide as she stares up at Adrianne. “I didn’t know you smoked?”

Rachel makes a weird, strangled noise beside her.

“Annie?!”

Adrianne swears that her head spins around on her neck in its short journey to face Rachel.

“Rose! Kid! You’ve probably got so many embarrassing stories about Annie!” Rachel drapes an arm over Rose’s shoulders and leads her toward a sticky, newly empty table. “C’mon. Hit me with ‘em.”

Adrianne sighs as she watches them walk away, realizing that she’s left standing with Rach’s forgotten toy. She smiles over at the girl, lifting her glass and plucking the bright red cherry out of it.

“You want the cherry?” she asks her, holding it up just above the girl’s mouth, what she wants her to do crystal clear. The girl’s massive, nearly black eyes lower as she puts on a shy, seductive little smile, and she pushes up onto her tiptoes to wrap her lovely mouth around the cherry, taking her time in breaking it away from the stem that Adrianne’s holding.

She glances over and stops breathing, her smile falling away and replaced with unchecked fear. Rose is staring right at her, mouth open like she was in the middle of a word, and there’s a question written all over her face that Adrianne can hear like it’s being blasted from the speakers:

 _Ohmygod, Annie, are you gay?_

 

The show starts soon after, preventing any kind of conversation for a solid hour and a half, thank fuck. Adrianne sticks close enough to Rose to make sure she doesn’t get jostled or knocked down, and about halfway through the set, she finds herself wedged between Rose and a giant metalhead who seems pretty intent on grinding against her.

She presses up against Rose’s back and throws an elbow back into the guy’s solar plexus, not even turning around when the guy yelps out in pain and stumbles away from them and into a whole other group of people. Rose turns to look up at her with a sheepish smile, not saying anything at all as she leans back against Adrianne the slightest bit, letting her small weight relax on Adrianne’s chest.

Adrianne wraps an arm around Rose’s waist and closes her eyes, letting the music vibrate all through her as the smell of Rose’s citrusy perfume drifts up to her nose, blocking out all the cigarettes and beer and sweat from everybody else.

 _This_ , Adrianne’s mind sighs, _this is exactly where I always wanna be._

 

Three hours later, Rose and Adrianne are in a circular booth at Denny’s with Rachel and Tal, a girl who’s gotten a lot more talkative as the night wears on and she gets more drinks in her. Rose tries not to watch as Rachel feeds her pineapple from a fruit bowl, and Adrianne has had enough from Rachel’s flask to leer at the girl’s pretty mouth between massive bites of her omelette.

“Pineapple makes you taste better,” Rachel informs them after feeding Tal another piece, licking her fingers clean of juice and girl spit. Adrianne takes a deep breath and sits back in her seat, desperately wishing she could smoke in here.

“Everybody knows--”

“Really?” Rose asks, now watching Tal chew with interest as she pokes at her own syrupless pancakes with the tines of her fork. 

“Oh, yeah. Makes your pussy juice taste nice and sweet.” Rachel pops a grape into her own mouth and chews, oblivious to the table of old dudes behind her that keep glancing over and glaring. She smirks at Rose. “You wanna order some fruit?”

Rose laughs, shooting a glance at Adrianne that almost makes her fucking heart stop.

“No, I’m good. Thanks.”

“So, did you have fun at the show? Was it too rowdy for you?”Adrianne knows Rachel well enough to know she doesn’t mean to sound condescending, that it’s just part of her outspoken, brash charm, but Rose doesn’t know her. Adrianne drops her fork and reaches for a napkin, and she’s just opening her mouth to snap something back at her when Rose speaks up.

“It was fun. Annie and I used to go to shows all the time. It doesn’t bother me.” She tears a piece of pancake off and pops it in her mouth, looking as calm and unintimidated as Adrianne’s ever seen her. She puts her claws away and picks up her fork again, smirking down at it in quiet pride in her girl.

“Even with crowds like that?” Rachel seems genuinely interested now, and she pushes the fruit bowl toward Tal so she can feed herself as she leans forward, elbows on the table, to listen to Rose.

“Oh, please.” A quick flick of Rose’s dark eyes makes Adrianne grin around her fork. “We’ve been to metal shows and hardcore shows and punk shows. A fucking grunge crowd is nothing.”

Another piece of pancake in her slightly smeared red mouth, and Adrianne squirms. She wants to fucking chew on her lips.

“We went to a hardcore show in DC last summer and ended up in the pit,” Rose starts.

“I spent the whole fucking time trying to keep people away from Rose,” Adrianne interjects.

“I was having so much fun. They were throwing me around and I was getting kicked and punched in the head and everything, but it was so amazing, like. Like I didn’t have any control over what was happening? So I just had to surrender and let it happen.” Rose sucks down a gulp of ice water.

“It’s much more fun to do that in a bed,” Rachel says with a knowing wink thrown to Adrianne.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Adrianne continues with a warning glare, “Rosey got kicked in the back of the knees, and she just went down. I lost her. One second she was there, the next she wasn’t. And she was getting trampled. God. I just… I fucking lost it.”

“Annie went after the guy who did it. I mean… it was an accident. He wasn’t aiming for me or anything. And he was _stacked_ , like. Six-four, two-fifty. Big dude. And she just went after him.”

“I got you up first,” Adrianne reminds her with a soft smile, her chest aching from the memory.

“Of course you did.” Rose leans into Adrianne, resting a cheek on her bare shoulder, so warm on her cool skin. “She climbed on his back and put him in a choke-hold. And she brought him down.”

“Ohmygod,” Rach laughs, shocked.

“Brought. Him. _Down_ ,” Rose repeats, lifting her head to beam at Adrianne. “It was amazing. She started kicking him when he passed out. I had to drag her away. She woulda killed him, if I hadn’t.”

“I had to wash blood off my shoes the next morning,” Adrianne adds, feeling no small amount of pride for almost murdering a dude for her little Rose. “Fucker.”

“It was an accident,” Rose reminds her quietly, an old argument.

“Doesn’t matter.” Adrianne can’t look at her because she means it too much, because there’s too much inside of her that would be disgustingly obvious in her eyes if she did. “You were bruised from head to toe. And fuck knows what would’ve happened if--”

“You’re always there,” Rose says, shifting closer, wrapping her arms around one of Adrianne’s and snuggling into her. “You’ll always be there.”

“You bet your ass,” Adrianne replies, soft against Rose’s ironed-straight hair before she drops a kiss there, her eyes closing for a quick second.

“How long have you two been together?” Tal asks before sinking her teeth into a chunk of cantaloupe. Adrianne and Rose both turn to look at her at the same time, and Adrianne can feel the heat that floods her own face.

“Oh, god. We’re--”

“We’ve been best friends since we were seven,” Rose cuts in, eating a mushroom off the corner of Adrianne’s plate and keeping her eyes decidedly down on their demolished food. “From the very first day we met.”

There’s a beat of quiet from the other side of the table, and Adrianne desperately wants… _something_. Anything. To slide out of the booth and drive away in the snow that started falling and not stop until she’s crossed at least three state lines. To look up at Rachel and beg her to change the goddamn subject. For Rose to profess some hidden, gay love she’s had for Adrianne since the fucking third grade. 

“Well, _I_ want a fruit bowl,” Adrianne says a little too loudly, catching the attention of their cute waitress and getting a tight-lipped smile and a nod from her. That makes Rachel cackle and Tal laugh so hard she chokes on her coffee, and Adrianne smiles, wobbly and kind of pained and right down at the food left on her plate that is making her nauseous just to look at now.

“Adri babe, we’ve gotta find a practice space. I don’t know how much longer we’re gonna be able to keep that hot bassist chick from The Smurfettes committed to us if we don’t try to--”

“Oh, are you guys starting a band?” Rose is suddenly present again, eyes up and flashing between the two of them, and Adrianne can’t come up with a lie fast enough to cover for Rachel’s drunken enthusiasm.

“Fuck, yeah! Has Adri not told you? She’s a fucking badass on the drums. Just like I told her. She’s only been playin’ ‘em for a few months, and she could already run circles around that chick from Rehymenated tonight.”

“I didn’t know you played drums?” Rose’s smile is small, and Adrianne forces herself to look over, to meet Rose’s eyes and feel the hurt coming off her in waves.

“Oh, I just started. Rach wanted me to because she already plays guitar.” Adrianne wipes her hands off on her pants, smearing grease and wishing she could brush her teeth and maybe jump off a fucking bridge. “It’s… I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything.”

“Me and Annie used to talk about starting a band,” Rose tells Rachel, stirring the ice in her glass with a straw and looking smaller than Adrianne’s seen her in years. “I was gonna sing, and she was gonna play guitar. We even wrote a few songs together and record them on a--”

“Oh, man, we’ve got this amazing chick that just moved here from Boston who’s gonna front for us. She has this scream that peels fuckin’ paint off the walls. We’re still debating over a name, but I really like Tricky and the Dicks.”

Another silence follows, a loaded, sad one that Rachel’s too plastered to notice, and Adrianne turns to the waitress who’s just walked up and flashes her best smile.

“Can you put that in a box for me and grab the check for us?” She motions between her and Rose and reaches into her back pocket for her wallet, not wanting Rose to know how strapped she is for cash or she’ll try and pay for them. The waitress smiles again, just a slash of annoyance across her tired face, and she retreats without a word.

Adrianne lets all the false charm slide from her own face, and she pointedly ignores the way Rachel is staring at her as she finishes off her omelette and quietly asks Rose if she wants a to-go box.

“It’s snowing pretty bad,” Rachel tells them, wrapping an arm around Tal and absently massaging one of her tits over her dress. “Are you sure you wanna drive home? You guys can come over to my place, if you want. It’s just a couple of streets over.”

“We’ll be fine,” Adrianne tells her, signing the credit card receipt and picking her battles by not arguing with the ten dollar bill Rose lays down on the table for a tip. “I’ll call you later. Good to meet you, Tal.”

“Yeah,” Tal says, watching Adrianne with lingering eyes that tell Adri she could have this girl around her waist in the bathroom in three minutes, if she really wanted to. And normally she would, loves to watch Rach’s fucktoys come on her fingers like they’ve never had an orgasm before, but.

She glances over at Rose, at her quiet, drawn face, at the way she hugs her little denim jacket tight around her tiny body. 

It’s not even a decision.

“Bye, guys,” she says, lifting a hand in a wave and giving Tal one last, long look, something to fuck herself to later. Rose waves with a wiggle of her fingers and walks out ahead of Adrianne, almost stepping out into the snow before Adrianne snags her back with a finger in one of her belt loops.

“Hey, hold up,” she orders, surprised when Rose listens. “It’s fucking freezing out here. C’mon, here.”

She pulls off her heavy leather jacket and drapes it over Rose’s small shoulders, warm all over just for how much her jacket swallows her girl up. 

“Annie, you’re just in a t-shirt now,” Rose sighs, her body lax as she lets Adrianne pull her arms through the long sleeves like she’s a little girl, her hands hidden and kept safe inside.

“I’m hot-blooded,” she tells her, reaching into Rose’s purse and snagging her keys. “I’ll drive us home. Your car’s heavier than mine.”

She pauses halfway across the parking lot, turning to make sure Rose is making her way safely across the icy pavement and that she’s not as annoyed as her quiet implies.

“Is it… do you wanna stay over?”

It wouldn’t even have been a question before, in any of the other years in their long relationship, but something about tonight makes Adrianne hesitate to ask, makes her worry that the answer is gonna be no.

Rose stops where she is, wrapped up in Adrianne’s jacket, lipstick faded, dark circles under her tired eyes from smeared eyeliner, the light behind her haloing her straight, dark red hair in a way that makes Adrianne feel pathetically poetic.

The pause seems to drag on forever.

“Yeah,” Rose finally says, taking a few more steps towards Adrianne, reaching for the passenger door handle of her own car. “That’d be good.”

 

The drive is quiet, The New Pornographers playing low from a CD Rose had in, so Adrianne just leaves it. Rose’s Chevy Nova had been a gift on her 16th birthday, a fixer upper that she’d spent the better part of the summer having restored to all it’s 1969, black and chrome and vinyl bench seat glory; a seat that shows Adrianne just how far away Rose is from her tuck against the passenger window.

She cranks up the heat and concentrates on the road, glad to be able to drive Rose home because she knows how much she hates to drive at night. 

They’re quiet until they get into Adrianne’s room and close the door, both of them shaking the snow out of their hair and stomping it off their shoes.

“Are you still interning or whatever with my cousin down at his garage?” Adrianne asks her, digging around in her dresser and pulling out a grey knit sweater that has been falling apart for years and a pair of pajama pants for Rose. 

“Yeah.” Rose clutches the clothes to her chest, glancing at the wall that separates Adrianne’s room from Sawyer’s. “He’s actually teaching me a lot. And I’m gonna take shop next semester with Coach Lester.”

“Do you think you wanna be a mechanic?” Adrianne asks with a smile as she pulls her shirt off over her head and digs around in her closet her old Garbage hoodie, the image of her little not-even-five-feet Rose under the hood of a giant car too adorable to not react to.

“Maybe,” Rose says, short and defensive. Adrianne turns to face her, catching the frown on her beautiful mouth and hating herself for putting it there.

“Hey, I think that’s awesome. You can do whatever you want, Rosey. Seriously. You’re fucking smart. The fact that you want to be a mechanic--”

“I want to do classic car restoration,” Rose corrects, still hugging the clothes instead of changing into them. “It’s kinda different.”

“Okay,” Adrianne says gently, not this patient or belly-showing with anybody else in the whole goddamn world. She tugs her wireless bra off from under the hoodie and changes quickly into sweatpants, wanting to ask why Rose isn’t changing but not sure she wants the answer. “Well, whatever. I’m an idiot about that shit. Whatever it is, you can do it.”

Rose doesn’t say anything else, just watches as Adrianne rubs her eyes with a baby wipe and pulls a beanie down over her short hair.

“Wanna go smoke a joint on the roof?”

Rose looks relieved for the first time all night.

 

It’s cold at shit, but the snow has let up some by the time Rose changes in the bathroom and they trek up to the roof of Adrianne’s apartment building that sets up high enough to overlook a good part of downtown Toledo. 

Adrianne’s bundled Rose up in another sweater over her first one and dragged three blankets up with them, and they’re wrapped up in them and sitting with their legs crossed and their knees touching as Adrianne digs the joint out of her stolen pack of Marlboro Reds. 

“Does my piece of shit car count as a classic?” she asks, the joint pinched delicately between her teeth as she lights the tip of it and sucks in a deep inhale. Rose laughs, a real one, her face clean of makeup now and even more beautiful for it. She takes the offered joint and inhales with a careful, thorough drag that makes Adrianne wonder how she sucks cock, if she’s ever even done it.

“It’s definitely vintage,” Rose tells her, exhaling in a cold-white plume that invades Adrianne’s nostrils. She inhales like Rose had shotgunned her. “You should seriously bring it in sometime though. It needs so much work done. It makes me a nervous wreck that you’re gonna be driving it this winter.”

“Aww, do you worry about me?” Adrianne feels how cold Rose’s little fingers are already when she takes the joint back from her, and her smile fades when she sees how serious Rose is, how dark her eyes look in the sparse lighting from the streets nearby. 

“Do you think you have the market cornered on worry?” Rose leans back against the brick wall that keeps the edge of the roof from being a clean, easy jump down, and Adrianne glances up at the ledge and wonders how many people have considered it, right here. How many have done it.

“That’s…” she starts, trying to ash the joint just for something to do. “That’s not what I meant, babe. I was just--”

“Of course I worry about you. I mean… you’re out here with that girl all the time, driving to shows all over the Midwest and doing whatever kind of drugs she can get ahold of, I’m sure. And… I mean, I found out tonight that she’s gay, but I’m sure there are awful guys who try to mess with you wherever you go--”

“I’m asexual,” Adrianne tells her, quick and desperate, the lie she’s been repeating since her own fourteenth birthday party when Rose had tried to set her up with some guy she worked with on the lit mag. She takes two hits from the joint and loosens her grip on it so Rose can have it back. “So it doesn’t really matter what a guy wants from me.”

“It doesn’t really matter what _you_ want, if a guy wants to take something from you,” Rose mutters around the spit-soaked tip of the joint that’s already half-gone. Adrianne wishes fiercely that she had another one. Adrianne stares at her, feeling the heat spread out through her; hot, sharp violence that makes her body so tense that she’s nearly shaking.

“Has a guy done that to you?” she manages to ask, trying so hard to see every minute change to Rose’s face from beneath the hood of her zip-up sweater. “Rosey, look at me. Has a guy ever tried to--”

“Why do you always assume that I can’t take care of myself?” 

Rose sounds tired, like some woman whose only weight is burdens and memories, the shadows under her eyes deeper in the near-darkness, in the tiny, flamed light from the joint she’s got between her full, pink lips.

It’s not an answer, not even close, but Adrianne doesn’t know if she has the right to push it, to demand the truth, not when she hides so much of herself from Rose now, not when she doesn’t know the little ins-and-outs of Rose’s days anymore; doesn’t know what songs she’s obsessed with or if she’s gotten a new lipstick that she can’t stop wearing or if she’s in one of her moods where she can only sleep a couple of hours each night.

For Rose and Adri, that’s as good as being strangers.

“I miss you,” she says, a truth too vast for how close they’re sitting, for the absolute lack of distractions. She has no choice but to watch Rose for a reaction, and Rose has no choice but to say something back.

“How can you miss me when I’m right here?” she replies, not meeting Adrianne’s eyes as she flicks ash from the joint and takes another drag.

“I would miss you even if you lived in my fucking ribs,” Adrianne tells her, something so honest that it tears at her throat, makes it feel so tight that she swears she can taste blood. Her face is frozen, her cheeks and nose burning red, blue eyes shining like glacier ice with the tears that have gathered in them.

“Why do you look at me sometimes like I’m the only person in the world?” It’s a question Rose has probably wanted to ask her whole life, one that catches Adrianne off guard, that makes her shed the very last of her reservations as she leans down to catch Rose’s gaze, those unfathomably dark eyes that hold so much in them, that possess every fucking thing Adrianne has ever found comfort in.

“You’re the only one worth seeing.” Horrible as far as romance goes, as far as poetry goes, but it’s shattering as a true thing. She feels it; the hot slip of a tear on her numb-cold cheek, and all she can think as she leans in and catches Rose’s mouth with her own so soft that it wouldn’t even disturb the powder on a moth wing, is that she hopes Rose can’t tell that she’s crying.

She can smell the constant, green burn of weed from the joint still held between Rose’s pale fingers, and she knows intellectually that there’s a whole world spinning on out there; cars driving by, people fucking and fighting and sleeping and dying, whole worlds of memories that she’ll never have or know, but it’s the first time she’s ever understood the phrase ‘the world stopped’.

She’s kissing Rose Winslow.

Rose exhales into her mouth, and they’re shotgunning for real now, smoke leaving in dreamy billows from between their soft mouths as Adrianne’s tongue dips in to touch at Rose’s, making sure she tastes her, if this is the first and last time.

Rose’s left hand comes down on top of Adrianne’s that are resting clasped together on her knee, and her long nails dig in like a plea as Adrianne shifts closer, some of her kept-in-check, years-long hunger slipping out. She stretches up long, overpowering Rose just a little bit, reminding Rose how tall she is, how many inches in height separate them, and Rose makes the smallest, broken sound, something that will be the catalyst for so many of Adrianne’s orgasms in the future, a sound she won’t ever forget, not ever.

She sucks on Rose’s bottom lip and then kisses at the top one, tasting lipstick remnants and the powder-chemical of the baby wipe, and Rose shivers all over when Adrianne sinks her teeth just barely into Rose’s lip, tugging on it with just a hint of the roughness Adrianne usually does this with, but not with Rose, never with Rose. This is her girl, this is her _one_ ; she’ll kiss her like worship, like an offering, like whatever is happening between them might shatter any second.

She’ll be gentle until Rose tells her not to be; begs her not to be.

They break away in phases, the kisses softening into rubbing mouths and breathless pants, strings of spit connecting their lips until they’re just leaning into each other, foreheads touching, noses nestled against cheeks, mouths nearby each other but not touching, like they’re already just remembering.

“I love you,” Adrianne says, and it hurts to say, breaks something vital in her. The futility of it makes her throat close up. 

She realizes now that this feels like nothing more than a goodbye.

“I don’t deserve it,” Rose whispers, so small that Adrianne wants to pull her into her lap, to wrap her up tight like Rose is a little girl. She has to dig her short nails into her own palms to keep from trying to.

“You deserve more than I have in me to give.” Another throwaway poem, another pathetic, queer love note for a girl who may appreciate the effort but will toss it in the trash anyway. Adrianne closes her eyes and swallows down the feeling of broken glass in her throat. “But I wanna try anyway. Just let me--”

“We should get back down to the room,” Rose says, cutting in at the worst time, but maybe at the only time she could have. She sounds nervous, the words rushed, like she’s begging Adrianne to shut the fuck up and not make her break her heart, not tonight.

But it breaks anyway.

“Yeah.” Adrianne pulls back, her hand honest-to-god shaking as she takes the tiny sip of the joint left from Rose’s fingers and smokes the remnants, putting the roach out on the brick and standing up. She feels like she’s going to puke, and she hopes it isn’t too obvious that she’s licking obsessively around in her mouth, gathering up every little taste of Rose she can so she can keep it. Somehow. “Go ahead. I’ll get all the blankets and follow you down.”

She can’t manage to look at Rose even though she can feel the dark of those eyes on her, knows Rose wants to make sure she’s okay even as she drowns in the guilt of being the reason she’s not. And she’s really, really not.

“You sure?” Rose finally asks. 

“Yeah, go.” Adrianne nods to the rusted metal door, the stairs that lead back down into the building. “I’ll be right behind you.”

It takes Rose too long to go, and Adrianne makes sure to keep her face carefully blank until she hears the door clatter closed behind her. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Adrianne whispers, the word shattering into jagged pieces as she buries her face in her hands and rocks back and forth like a psych ward patient, safe enough up here where no one else is and no one cares that she is to sob, just once and loud enough to echo into the snow-heavy night, dying off in the sound-dampening white.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Ever. She was never supposed to kiss Rose, never supposed to show her or let her know. Never was supposed to expect anything from Rose, especially not… 

Especially not.

She’s on her feet without knowing how, her knees shaking like they do when the landlord beats on the door, yelling about the late rent, and the bottoms of her Chelsea boots are slick with decades of adventures as she steps up onto the snowy ledge, standing nearly six feet tall as she looks down at the quiet world twenty stories below.

Fucking cliche. Too goddamn embarrassing to die this way, surely, but the urge is nearly overpowering. And everybody would know why. Everybody knows she’s in love with Rose; everybody. Maybe even Rose most of all. She’s never been good at really hiding it, at keeping enough of it close to her chest. It hurts too much. There’s too much of it to contain it all. It would destroy her to keep it all hidden away, to not let some of it out sometimes. So surely Rose knows. And it’s why she cut Adrianne off earlier, why she kept her from saying something that would beg an answer out of Rose, that would force Rose to finally reject her in a way she’s been dancing around for years.

A frozen blast of wind whips by her, making her close her eyes to it, the sudden darkness making her sway, disoriented. She knows the second it happens, that knife’s-edge moment when she almost goes over the edge, but she leans back just as her right foot slips out from under her, and most of her body lands a few feet down onto their nest of blankets, only her calves coming down brutally hard on the unforgiving edge of the bricks, tearing into the skin and surely leaving bruises that will take weeks to heal.

Better than death.

Maybe.

She pulls her phone out of her pocket and thumbs down in her contacts, hitting send and closing her eyes as she fights to breathe, the fall knocking the wind out of her.

“Adri, how do you _know_ when I’m fucking and don’t wanna talk? You have such a sixth sense about it. You should take your act on the road. Adri Palicki, the clit-block.”

She waits Rachel out, not reacting when the snow starts up again and falls in cold, needlepricks on her face.

“I kissed Rose,” she says.

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.” There’s a rustle and some mumbling and more movement, and Adrianne hears a door close and the flick of a lighter before Rachel talks again. “Okay. _What_?”

“Rose. I kissed her. Like, five minutes ago.” She knows she sounds emotionless, like she doesn’t care that the most important thing in the world just happened to her, but Rachel knows her well enough to read through it, to sense how close Adrianne is to losing it. Surely to God.

“Did… Jesus fuck, kid. Did she kiss you back?”

Adrianne lets herself slip back into the moment, into the kiss, and she feels a warm, damp pulse between her legs when she relives it; the wet of Rose’s mouth, her slick tongue, those soft, pornstar lips moving against her own. Yeah, yeah, she’d definitely, definitely fucking kissed her back.

“Definitely,” Adrianne breathes, a hand slipping into her sweats to rub absently over her cunt, not surprised to feel how wet she is. 

“Oh, God.” Rachel sighs, and Adrianne knows it came with a plume of smoke. “Adri, don’t… I mean, I’m happy for you. Don’t get me wrong. I know how long you’ve been in love with this girl. And I know how you feel about her--”

“You don’t know how I feel,” Adrianne tells her, her voice low, adamant. “I’m… Fuck, I’m sorry, Rach, but you don’t know. You’ve never been in love. Not really. You told me that. So… you don’t get it. Unless you have. You don’t fucking understand what this is like.”

“Yeah, but I’ve fallen for a straight girl before,” Rachel says with surprising gentleness. “And I know what _that’s_ like. I know how shitty and useless it is. Don’t… shit, man. Just don’t get your hopes up. Don’t do that to yourself. You _know_ how this is gonna end.”

“You don’t know that she’s straight.” It’s pathetic, a weak fucking argument, but Adrianne has to make it. “You don’t know that.”

“Kid, to chicks like you and me, girls like Rose are straight. She might let you lick her pussy when she’s drunk, or let you fuck her after her boyfriend’s finished with her and forgot to care if she came or not. But girls like her are never gonna choose a girl. Never. Girls like her need dick too much. And they need the hairy fuckheads attached to them.”

“I can _buy_ one,” Adrianne says, pleading, pushing herself to sit up against the wall, the backs of her legs burning and throbbing with pain, but she ignores it. “I can buy any size dick she wants. I can have a bigger one than any guy could ever--”

“It’s not the same,” Rachel sighs, her voice filled with true sadness, empathy that Adrianne needs so desperately but doesn’t want, not tonight. “Not for them. You aren’t the whole package they need. That _she_ needs. You’re fucking amazing, Adri. You’re somebody’s whole package. A fuckin’ hundred somebodies, prolly. But… but you’re not hers, babe. And you never will be.”

“I’ve gotta go,” Adrianne mumbles, her eyes so blurred with tears that she can’t even see to find the end call button. She pushes buttons until she doesn’t hear Rachel’s voice anymore. She feels her frozen face contort into an ugly, tear-stained mess, and she rolls over onto her side in the blankets still warm from Rose’s little body, that still smell like her to Adrianne’s stoned, obsessive mind, burying her face in them to muffle the sound as she finally, finally lets herself cry.

 

It’s near the witching hour when she finally shuffles back to her floor and into the dark apartment, vaguely worried about her legs and her ankles, but more concerned about her stupid fucking heart. 

Rose is asleep in her bed, so small and curled up against the wall like she always is, looking like a little girl waiting for her daddy to come tuck her in. She’s swallowed up in Adrianne’s sweater, hands still hidden in the sleeves, blankets pulled up around her waist but no further. It’s their ritual, a thing they’ve done since elementary school; Adrianne always takes the spot on the outside of the bed, the last line of defense against whatever bump in the night tries to come for Rose while they sleep, the blankets low so that Adrianne can pull them up when she gets in and nestles along behind Rose.

They’ve had the comfort of marriage down for almost a decade now, and the scent of Rose in her bed is shockingly arousing and familiar, all at once.

She heads for the beanbag in front of her chair instead, bringing the blankets from the roof with her. The windowsill is cold when she rests her head back against it, her bare feet probably nearing hypothermia by the time she kicks her shoes off. 

Her Discman is right where she left it beside the beanbag, and she finally manages to relax when she pushes play on the seventh song on the Sonic Youth CD spinning in her lap.

You're perfect in the way, a perfect end today  
You're burning out their lights and burning in their eyes  
I love you Sugar Kane, a-comin' from the rain  
Oh kiss me like a frog, and turn me into flame  
I love you all the time, I need you eight to nine  
Oh I can stay all night, your body shining

She wishes she could see Rose’s face while she sleeps, wishes she could see her dark eyelashes and her bare mouth, wishes she could see the perfect line of her nose and the way her hair falls against her cheek, wishes she could go over there and push her sweater up and see the tiny, forever-young swells of her tits, wishes she could bury her face between them and smile when Rose says she’s got the chest of a young boy, wishes she could feel Rose’s heart race against her mouth and against her fingers when she tucks them inside of her, wishes she knew if Rose got sopping wet way before she ever comes, wishes she knew if Rose ever thought about it, ever wondered what it would be like if Adrianne just pushed a little lower when she held her at night, what it would be like if Adrianne unleashed everything, just for one night. Just once.

Adrianne comes silently against her own rubbing fingers, her chapped lips bitten between her teeth so hard that she tastes blood, and she pretends she can’t feel the tears that have come back, reminding her that her only weakness is that girl over there asleep in her bed, that she would die or kill for Rose and not hesitate. Not even for a second. 

Sometimes, she feels like her whole life is just waiting for the opportunity to do one or the other.

 

\---

 

She shouldn’t be surprised, but it breaks something in Adrianne when she starts to feel Rose slip away.

And maybe she’d hoped for a miracle; for Rose to wake her up the next morning with a kiss, with a hungry spread of her legs to let Adrianne feast until she couldn’t feel her tongue anymore and maybe they would swear off everything and everyone but each other, just like when they were little. Only this time, Adrianne gets to grind her cunt against Rose’s and gets to lick her tears when Adri makes it too good and this time, Rose lets Adrianne hold her hand when they walk down the hall and everybody sees Adrianne, really sees her, for the first time. Only Adrianne doesn’t give a fuck, doesn’t see anyone else but the beautiful girl at her side, the one that will always be there now, always. And she really knows it this time.

But, yeah. None of that happens.

 

“What’re you doin’?”

“Nothin’,” Adrianne replies, bare feet on the wall above her headboard, right on Kathleen Hanna’s crotch. She wiggles her toes a little to tease Kathleen’s clit through her skirt and smirks half-heartedly. “Why?”

“Are you in bed?”

Adrianne stills her foot.

“...No.”

“Are you in your pajamas?”

She glances down at her sports bra and her boxers.

“Why?”

“Woman, get the fuck out of bed and go take a shower. I’m coming to pick you up.”

“Uhhhh.” She sits up finally, swinging her legs around until her feet touch the floor. “Why?”

“Because it’s fucking New Years Eve, and I’m not gonna let you be a whiny dyke who sits at home and jerks off to her Kathleen Hanna poster when the ball drops,” Rachel shoots back, the rustle on her end of the phone telling Adrianne that she’s putting on makeup.

“I was jerking _off_ my Kathleen Hanna poster,” Adrianne corrects in a mumble.

“...What?”

“Where are we _going_?” Adrianne practically whines, but she’s already forcing herself to her feet and shuffling over to her closet to poke around.

“A party.” Rachel is definitely grinning.

Adrianne makes an unimpressed noise as she pulls out a long-sleeved black shirt and throws it on her bed.

“A really good party. Thrown by lesbians. So much good pussy there. _So_ much.”

The next sound Adrianne makes is a little more considerate.

“I even have a present for you,” Rachel continues over the sound of The Distillers in the background. Adrianne grabs a pair of black panties out of her top drawer and stops on her way to the bathroom and a shower.

“What kind of present?” she asks.

“A little one. Couple inches over five feet, little tits. Just broke up with her boyfriend last week, and she told me last night while she was drunk and I was fucking her that she saw you at practice on Tuesday and thought you were hot.”

Adrianne tries to think of all the faceless people at band practice the other day, and Rachel takes her silence as interest.

“Pick you up at ten?”

Adrianne sighs, flipping on the bathroom light and staring at her pale, sunken reflection, the hard knots of her piercings through the white bra.

“Yeah, fine.”

“Wear something hot. She likes butch girls.”

She hangs up before Adrianne can argue the finer points of lesbian labels, and she’s almost grateful for the distraction from the fact that she hasn’t talked to Rose since Christmas Eve.

Not that she’s keeping track.

 

The party is already raging by the time they get there, and Adrianne doesn’t even care that she’s in a house full of strangers tonight. In fact, it’s fucking preferable.

She’s wearing a thin, clinging black shirt that covers her hands and a pair of destroyed jeans over black fishnets and her ride-or-die boots. Her hair bleached white and growing out again, at that awkward stage where it looks like a mullet, and so it’s all hidden carefully under a black beanie.

Rachel had told her she doesn’t look gay enough, but Adrianne is finding it hard to give a shit about much of anything lately.

She’s sprawled out on a couch, two shots of whiskey in and a cigarette hanging from her mouth when Rachel appears from the crowd in front of her, a fun-sized brunette in front of her.

“Elise, this is Adri. Adri, Elise.” Rachel already looks plenty fucked up, and her eyes are grinning slits when she plops onto the opposite end of the couch and orders Elise to sit between them.

“Hey,” Adrianne says, plucking the cigarette from her lips and tipping her head up to exhale. Elise is staring at her with stars in her eyes, her little sparkly black dress riding high on her thighs and low on her barely-there tits. Adrianne finds herself licking her lips like a cat in front of a bowl of tuna. 

“I saw you,” Elise breathes, so sweet and soft that Adrianne wants to breed her right here, “last week at practice. I said hi to you before you started, do you remember? I was wearing a red skirt?”

Adrianne’s mind is a fucking depressed blank.

“Oh, yeah,” she says slowly, letting a grin stretch out on her face as Rachel stealthily snags her cigarette. “I remember you.”

“You’re so amazing,” Elise continues, completely turned to face Adrianne on the couch while Rachel slouches behind her, grinning like a pimp and lifting her hips to mime fucking Elise’s tight ass. Adrianne just barely contains her eyeroll. “I never thought about drums a lot before I saw you playing them. And now, I just…”

Elise sighs like a Disney princess, and it sounds so genuine that Adrianne can’t help but feel flattered.

“Yeah?” she asks, making it nice and low, the way that makes girls like Elise wet.

“Mm,” Elise nods, emphatic and rubbing her strawberry-red lips together. She’s moving all slow and dreamy, like a pill is starting to kick in, like she’s swimming through the night and like she’s ready to come on Adrianne’s tongue in a marathon fuck. “You’re _so_ good. And so strong. Your arms were flexing the whole time, and…”

Adrianne can only watch as Elise reaches out and runs a little hand up her bicep, and she really, truly can’t keep from flexing under the touch, giving Elise something to grab onto.

“Oh, wow.” Elise sounds surprised, truly turned on, her round little cheeks flushed the color of dolls’, her cherub mouth parted.

“Adri’s strong all over,” Rachel the matchmaker says from behind Elise, her mouth nearly against the girl’s ear. “Sit on her lap and see. I bet she’ll barely feel a little thing like you.”

“Can I?” Big blue eyes meet her own, and Adri loves more than she’ll admit that this girl is asking for permission.

“C’mere,” she murmurs, sitting back and offering up her lap. Elise settles in like a little girl on Santa, her strappy heels poking at the leather couch cushion. She’s warm and smells like pink flowers and vanilla, and her arms wrap around Adrianne’s neck like she’s been waiting so long for a Daddy.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Elise asks.

Rachel nudges Adrianne’s arm, passing over a nearly full bottle of Jack. Adrianne takes a two-swallow gulp and hands it back, her throat burning, but she feels better prepared for this now.

“You can tell me anything,” she replies.

Elise leans in, mouth soft as a petal against Adrianne’s ear.

“I’m not wearing any panties tonight.”

Adrianne hums low in her throat, letting it rumble through her chest in a way that makes Elise shiver on top of her. Her hand finds its way between Elise’s smooth thighs and under her tight dress, and Elise makes a tiny, hurt sound when Adrianne runs her fingers over the soft, smooth skin of her cunt.

“Bare pussy,” Rachel whispers against her other ear, her breath ripe with tequila and girl. “Happy fuckin’ New Year.”

Adrianne curls her fingers and tucks two inside of the girl in her lap as she kisses her for the first time, and there’s a strange comfort in the way Rachel kisses at Adrianne’s neck and rubs at her pierced tits through her shirt. 

“Want you to eat my pussy,” Elise huffs against her mouth after she comes all over Adrianne’s fingers, her lipstick smeared on Adrianne’s mouth now just as much as her own. “I’ll do anything you want. I just really want you to eat me out.”

Adrianne brings her hand to her mouth and licks her fingers clean before following it up with a few more swigs of whiskey, feeling loose and horny and so hungry to taste this girl that she can barely remember what Rose looks like right now.

“I know a room upstairs,” Rachel tells them, devil on Adri’s shoulder. “C’mon. I wanna watch.”

Adrianne tries to put Elise down, but the little thing wraps her legs around Adrianne’s waist and hugs her neck like it’s bedtime, and Adrianne flashes Rachel a toothy, tipsy grin as she gets both hands on the girl’s ass and carries her toward the stairs, following along behind Rachel as the alcohol floods smoothly into her veins.

The hallway is dark, and Adrianne’s glad Rachel knows the way, because she can barely see the door they stop in front of, that Rachel opens and steps aside to let them in.

“Dominique and Nikki won’t mind, I promise. I always come up here when--”

Rachel stops talking when Adrianne stops a few feet inside of the doorway and doesn’t go any further, doesn’t move. Adrianne doesn’t hear her anyway, doesn’t hear or know or see or feel a single thing except what is happening a few feet away on the massive sleigh bed with dark, burgundy sheets.

Rose is there on her back, naked in a way Adrianne hasn’t seen in years, that she hasn’t really seen ever, if she’s being honest, her feet still tucked into flat, silver mary janes even though the rest of her is completely bare. Her thighs are spread, her tits are flushed and tiny and shuddering because she’s being fucked, hard and packing and wet, if the sloppy sound of the thrusts are anything to go by, and she’s turned to look at Adrianne standing there holding Elise in her arms, and there is nothing in her eyes but absolute, paralyzing horror.

“Sawyer,” she yelps, slapping at his arms, trying to kick him off of her. “Sawyer, stop!”

“What the f--”

Adrianne’s brother, her doppelganger in so many ways, pauses with his dick sunk deep into Rose, into _Adrianne’s Rose_ , and the annoyance on his face smoothes out only when he looks over, when he sees her.

“Oh,” he says, arms trembling where they’re braced on either side of Rose’s head. “Fuck.”

Adrianne lets go of Elise, lets the girl slip down her body and to her own feet, and she’s forgotten immediately. She manages to tear her eyes away from Rose, but they only go as far as her brother, and maybe it’s the liquor in her system, but she feels a rage coursing through her that should fucking terrifying her.

“Get off of her,” she whispers, her voice shaking, her face deep red from held breath until she sucks in a massive one and screams loud enough to make everyone in the room jump. “ _GET THE FUCK OFF OF HER._ ”

Sawyer, the goddamn idiot, doesn’t move, even though Rose is scrambling to get out from beneath him and cover herself up and Adrianne is charging toward them.

“Jesus, Adri, what the fuck is your pr--”

“Get out of her get off of her get off of her GET OFF. OF. HER.” She grabs her brother by his shaggy, surfer boy hair and yanks on him with her drummer-fit arms until he’s slipping from the bed and falling to the floor in a naked, tangled heap with the sheets. Rose pedals back against the headboard and reaches for the thrown-aside comforter, pulling it up around her and watching in a fear that Adrianne only vaguely registers.

Adrianne hits the floor next to her brother and straddles him, not caring that he’s naked and his dick is hard but quickly wilting with a condom hanging half off of it. He lifts his arms to shield his face because he knows what’s coming, but she rears back and punches him in the face anyway, pummeling him with both fists over and over, hitting his jaw, his temple, his throat, his nose, his fucking mouth, anywhere she can reaches as he bucks and thrashes and tries to get her off of him.

There’s a blur of sound from everyone in the room shouting at once, but Adrianne knows her own voice is the loudest, knows that it sounds as bloody as it feels in her throat as she screams and punches her brother in the head until he stops fighting back as much, until his arms fall limp against his chest and she can reach his face, unhindered.

“Annie, stop!”

Rose is there beside her, naked and with a shaky hand on Adrianne’s arm, tears streaking her beautiful, fuck-flushed face as she begs Adrianne.

“Stop, you’re gonna kill him!”

The thought of it, of murdering her brother, actually sounds amazing. She can picture him fucking the love of Adrianne’s life, will be able to picture it forever, and it’s enough to make her clamp both hands around his throat and push down with all her weight, her face falling smooth, calm even through the tears.

“Adrianne, goddamnit, _stop_!”

Adrianne feels herself being pulled off of Sawyer, lifted with four hands and dragged back until she can’t reach him anymore. She’s crying now, really crying, sucking in ragged, deep breaths that come out in rushing sobs. Rach and Rose let her go and she collapses in a heap on the floor, and somewhere in the back of her head, she’s mortified by the sounds coming out of her right now in front of the three people who know her best.

“You fucking _psycho bitch!_ ” Sawyer screams at her, spitting what Adrianne knows is bloody spit as far as he can, but it doesn’t reach her. Rose is with Sawyer, smoothing his hair back from his face and trying to calm him down.

“Sawyer, baby, please. Just be still, okay? Just--”

“She’s been mine for years, Adri. Did you know that? Did your little Rose ever tell you that? I was her first fucking kiss, even.”

Adrianne looks up at that, and Rose, beautiful, tear-streaked goddess that she is, falls back on her haunches beside Sawyer, her mouth open in shock.

“Don’t,” she starts to whisper.

“We’ve been dating since June. She practically fuckin’ lives with me now. She _loves_ me, Adri. You hear me, you fucking dyke? She loves _me_.” Sawyer is snarling now, hideous in his rage, but Adrianne can only stare at Rose’s small hand on Sawyer’s chest, right over his heart.

“I hate you,” Adrianne says, quiet, all she has left. Her shirt is torn, her beanie gone, and her lip is fat and bleeding, filling her mouth with the salty taste of iron. 

“She’s never been in love with you. She’s always thought you were fucking pathetic.”

“Sawyer, _shut the fuck up_!” Rose shouts.

“She’s _straight_ , Adrianne. _Straight_. She doesn’t want you,” Sawyer tells her as he pushes to his feet and reaches for his clothes at the foot of the bed, throwing Adrianne’s words from years ago back in her face, hurting her in a way that only the two of them know.

“Don’t you ever speak for me again,” Rose says, standing up herself, trying to keep the sheet wrapped around her as she fumbles for her own clothes. She grabs a silver and black dress off the floor and rushes out of the room, pushing Rachel out of the way to get to the door.

Adrianne comes to life then, trying to stand up as her world spins only to be stopped by Rachel’s hand. Sawyer is right there beside her, wearing jeans now, his face red and swollen. Rachel looks as shaken as Adrianne’s ever seen her, but she stands her ground and holds Sawyer and Adrianne both back.

“Leave her alone for awhile,” Rachel tells them, but Sawyer shoves her hand away, glaring at her with a hatred so obvious that Rachel nearly flinches. 

“Don’t tell me what to do with my own girlfriend ever again,” he says, his voice low, eyes darting between Rachel and Adrianne both. He gathers up the rest of their shit, shoving their phones in his pocket and snatching up Rose’s purse, and he makes sure to hit Adrianne hard with his shoulder on the way out.

Adrianne stares after him, staggering on her own feet. 

Years. He’d said years.

First kiss.

“Adri. Kid, c’mon. Hey, look at me.”

Everything Adrianne had imagined, had daydreamed about. Had thought she maybe saw a hint of in Rose’s eyes, the seed of something. Of a lot of somethings. Of maybe-somedays and maybe if Adrianne was just patient, just gave Rose time. If she just waited long enough.

_She’s always thought you were fucking pathetic._

They’d talked about her. Rose had talked about her with Sawyer. They’d discussed her. Adrianne being in love with Rose. She knew. _He_ knew.

She thinks of the ledge that night a couple of months ago, thinks of the near-slip that had almost sent her tumbling to the snow-laden street below, had almost been her last decision ever.

She wants that moment back right now, more than anything. Wants to make a different choice than the one she did.

“He was just trying to hurt you. None of that shit was true. What he said about Rose. You _know_ it. You know her.” Rachel feels like a sister, the way she’s rubbing Adrianne’s back, guiding her to sit down on the bed, petting through her hair. Adrianne closes her eyes and leans into it.

“Apparently not,” Adrianne manages, her chin trembling after she gets the words out, her eyes falling closed as the tears come again, and she blames the whiskey for them. The whiskey, and not the fact that Rose is the only thing that can ever make her feel this much.

“Are you okay?” comes a soft voice that Adrianne doesn’t recognize immediately. There are sweet, little girl fingers on her neck, on the curve of her ear as she tucks her hair behind it, and that sweet scent of flowers is back. Adrianne swallows around the tightness in her throat. Elise. 

“You can go,” Adrianne tells her, tells them both. “I’m. I just wanna go home. I’m just gonna go--”

“Shhh,” Elise soothes, using her small weight to guide Adrianne to lie back on the bed, on the pillow that still smells like Rose. Her Rose. “Just be still. We’re not going anywhere.”

Adrianne’s eyes fall closed, her face swollen from crying and the few hits Sawyer got in, and all she can breathe is Rose, all she can think about is the finality of what just happened, of the biggest possible rejection coming in the form of Rose being in love with her brother. Her brother, not her.

“You want me to make you feel better?” Elise whispers, nails so gentle on Adrianne’s sweaty scalp. She manages to nod, and the bed is shifting, moving under the weight of three bodies, and there’s warm skin near Adrianne’s face suddenly, so soft and God, the smell of pussy. Hot and silky soft and salt of the earth. 

Adrianne doesn’t even open her eyes as Elise’s tiny cunt settles on her mouth and her thighs hug Adrianne’s cheeks. She doesn’t react to the unbuttoning of her jeans and the yank of them down along with her fishnets and her panties, and she can only suck in a deep breath through her nose when Rachel licks into her pussy. 

Everybody’s distracted, lost in their own hunger and their own thoughts, and none of them hear the countdown going on downstairs and the explosive cheers in the first seconds of 2005, and no one notices the tears sliding down the sides of Adrianne’s face when she starts to lap into Elise’s juicy little cunt, letting herself get lost in this girl just for right now. Just for tonight.

It’s the beginning of a pattern she won’t notice for years.

 

\---

 

By spring, the band has settled on the name Dykeadelic Furs, and Trish’s dad is rad enough to let them practice in their soundproof basement. Trish is eighteen and smoking hot, an ex-Smurfette (biggest chick band outta Toledo in the last few years) and a badass bass player. 

Kayla is a little spark of a girl, seventeen and straight out of Boston with a voice that makes Adrianne fucking certain that, one day, she’ll be able to come right there on her drum stool. Kayla has hot pink hair and wears crop tops and has her eyebrow pierced, and Adrianne is halfway in love with her.

Rachel won’t let Adri fuck her. Bad for business, apparently.

A lot of people come watch them practice now, some of them girlfriends or fucktoys or friends of the band, some just bored people from school who want something vaguely cool to do after they huff paint and blow each other.

And maybe it’s because Adrianne hasn’t really talked to her since the dying breaths of 2004, but the second-to-last person she expects to see walk down the stairs and into the basement is Rose Blake Winslow.

The very last person she expects to see, her own brother, is attached to Rose’s hand.

She looks away quickly, leans over to fumble with the untied laces of her boot, but not before she takes a mental picture of them: Sawyer’s growing a beard that looks red and fucking ridiculous, and Rose is letting her hair grow out and gently curl again, like she used to. It’s grazing her elbows already, and she’s wearing Adri’s favorite red dress with white hearts on it under a black cardigan.

She’s still Rose, forever Rose, and Adrianne feels the shudder and skip of her heart. 

“C’mon, let’s go,” she says over the noise, and she looks up to catch Rachel’s eye, pleading with her silently to get everybody to pay the fuck attention.

“Alright, if you’re not in the band, shut the fuck up,” Kayla says into the mic with her crazy Boston accent, and everybody falls quiet, like some kinda magic. Rachel grins at Adrianne, but she can only smile back with a tiny quirk of her mouth, most of her energy focused on not watching Sawyer and Rose settle onto a sagging couch, or the way Rose drapes one of her legs over Sawyer’s lap, lazy and familiar and comfortable.

“Count it off, kid,” Rachel tells Adri, and she snaps out of it, lifts her drumsticks, and slams them together with a mumbled count to three.

The room explodes with music, and she sinks into it gratefully.

 

Practice ends when Rachel has to leave for work, and some people leave right behind her. Others stay and smoke and talk while Trish puts on an old Hole CD and opens up a mini-fridge and offers people her dad’s beer.

Adrianne keeps her head down, refusing to look at Rose and her brother. She’s got nothing left to do but leave after she gets her shit packed up and the sweat wiped off of her, but Rose gathers up her courage before she can do it.

“Hey,” comes the most familiar voice in the world, and Adrianne closes her eyes where she’s bent over her gear bag, gripping the slick fabric in slowly-closing fists as she takes a deep breath and forces herself to turn around.

“Hey, Rosey,” she says as evenly as she can, standing up and pulling the bag onto her shoulder. She opens her eyes and turns around, coming face-to-face with the happiest couple in Toledo and their eternally attached hands. She doesn’t care if they both know how forced her smile is.

She knows it doesn’t matter, but she loves that she’s exactly an inch and a half taller than her brother.

“That was… you were _amazing_. I mean, you all were. The whole band. But… wow. You on the drums. I just can’t believe it.” Rose is gushing and she means it, Adrianne can tell. She meets her eyes, and the smile on Rose’s face pulls her right in, yanks her right back down into all the years before that they’ve shared, that they’ve known each other and loved each other and learned the forwards and backwards meaning of the word _unconditional_.

Rose is glowing and staring right into Adrianne’s eyes, and Adrianne knows because she knows Rose better than anyone-- _anyone_ \--that it’s just for her.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Adrianne says quietly, touched and tamed by the emotions thrumming through her, just as intense and true and on the surface of her skin as they’ve always been. “That means a lot.”

“Good job, Adri,” Sawyer says, the praise a little strange coming from him, the tone one Adrianne’s not used to from her brother, but she takes the effort for what it is. She makes herself look over, meet his eyes that are the exact same color as her own. His face is all healed, of course, the bulk of the anger and hurt gone between them, but the pain is still there, the resentment that has kept them apart their whole lives.

And it’ll probably never go away.

She nods, giving him a smile because she’s a good person, because she would do anything for Rose. And she knows she really does mean that now.

“Thanks, asswipe,” she replies.

Sawyer grins, surprised, and the tension between the three of them falls away with tangible relief. Adrianne glances down at their tangled hands, forces herself to accept it. Accept them.

“We’re gonna go grab some food,” he says, nodding off toward a vague place. “You wanna come?”

“I’d really love to, but I’ve gotta study for finals. I swear to fuck, I’m gonna fail Chem II.”

“You won’t,” Rose replies warmly, reaching up to squeeze Adrianne’s sweat-slicked arm in a touch that nearly brings Adrianne to her knees. “I’ll call you, okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, her heart in her throat. She’s never seen that lipstick on Rose. Doesn’t know what that new perfume is called. “Sure.”

They both wave goodbye with their loose hands, and Rose looks back over her shoulder just once and for only a second as they head back upstairs.

Rachel’s gone, and no one else gives much of a shit about Adrianne, so nobody notices when she sinks back down on her stool and shoves her hands in her hair, pulling until clumps of it come out in her trembling fists.

 

Dinner is Hamburger Helper and instant mashed potatoes, and Adrianne and her dad both eat theirs mixed up together in big bowls and wash it all down with Diet Mountain Dew. _CSI_ ’s on the TV, and a comfortable silence has kept them both quiet for nearly the whole hour.

“Dad,” she says during the second to last commercial break, gathering and dropping her hamburger-noodle-potato goulash on her spoon. “I’m gay.”

The commercial carries on after her admission, some weird Skittles ad they’ve seen five times already this episode, but the stillness in the room is deafening. Dinner churns heavy in her stomach.

Why did she say gay? Why didn’t she say _lesbian_? Maybe he won’t understand what she means by gay. Maybe he’s gonna kick her out of the house, and she doesn’t have any fucking clean clothes right--

“I know, kid,” he says, leaning over to put his bowl on the coffee table and grabbing his glass. “But I’m glad you told me.”

She stares at him in astonishment.

“You knew,” she says flatly.

Dad looks over with a smile he’s trying very hard not to have.

“Honey,” he says, and she can tell he’s trying to be as gentle as possible, “you are the gayest kid I’ve ever met. Ever. You always have been.”

She huffs for that, dropping her spoon in the bowl with a clatter and setting it on the end table.

“What do you mean? Just because I’m not girly? Just because I played sports and have short hair and don’t shave my pits and--”

“Because of how you are with Rose,” he cuts in, and those seven words absolutely silence her.

She dares to look up at him as she picks obsessively at a scab on her knee, letting the pain calm her.

“What do you mean?” she asks, but she already knows, and he knows it.

His smile is so soft, so _sorry_ that she feels her throat tighten. She looks away, caught and embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry, kid,” he says, even though the show’s back on again. “I’m sorry about her and Sawyer. I know how much she means to you.”

Adrianne hates those words, hates hearing that from anybody, but she doesn’t snap at him like she does everybody else, doesn’t force him to take them back. She was little when her mom left, but she remembers her. Remembers how happy Dad used to be. Remembers his laugh, his smile, remembers the way he looked at her. She knows he knows what being in love is.

“Thanks,” she says softly, clearing her throat, looking down at her knee where the scab’s reopened, bleeding fresh.

“You wanna kick my ass at Call of Duty before bed?”

Her head shoots up, her face splitting into a grin.

“ _Obviously_ ,” she replies, jumping up from the couch to grab the controllers.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finally breaking free of high school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this chapter contains m/m and f/f/m sex scenes.)

**2006**

 

Across America, some Natasha Bedingfield ballad has been deemed the graduation song of 2006, and Adrianne feels like the weirdest eighteen year old in existence because she’s the only one not crying and singing along to it.

The official post-graduation party is being hosted after hours at a fitness club off the highway, and even though every single person had talked shit about it for weeks, most of Adrianne’s graduating class is here. She blames the two pools and the dozens of little places to tuck into and fuck.

And here she is, of course, because underneath everything, she’s still so much like all the people she walked across the stage with earlier today: young and insecure and pathologically terrified of being left out.

Most everyone is outside in the big pool under the bright, open sky, and so Adrianne seeks solace in the dark, chlorine-scented room that holds the indoor one. There are other weirdos in here: a few goth kids, the fat girls who won’t learn to love their bodies for years, the kid who almost died of an asthma attack freshman year in gym, and the one little gay boy not confident enough to be fabulous. Yet.

(Neither he or Adri know that he’ll go on to marry a currently-closeted boy band celebrity, but he’s paying his dues here, tonight.)

Adrianne’s wearing ripped-up black skinny jeans and a t-shirt from the 1998 Lilith Fair, a graduation gift from Rachel who insisted she wear it tonight, just in case anyone was confused about how gay Adrianne is.

She has a joint tucked in her pocket, a reminder that this is almost over, that she’s almost out. That she doesn’t even have to be here now, if she doesn’t want to. 

But she isn’t gonna leave. And anyone who’s known Adrianne for even an hour would know why she’s here.

She’s barely seen Rose all day, and each sighting of her has been like a knife to the gut. They’re strangers now, so few memories between them over the last couple of years that Adrianne wonders if she’s forgetting her. Losing pieces of Rose every day, just like she did with her own mom.

She accepted that loss. She can deal with Rose’s, too.

“Do you really think this is a safe distance from the splash when Amy Perkins decides to jump in?”

Adrianne tips her head up, the vodka and rum sloshing pleasantly in her brain. She grins at Rose. Can’t help it.

“I don’t mind getting wet,” she replies.

Rose drops down to sit beside Adrianne, leaning with her back against the concrete wall, tucked instinctively into the corner, protected by Adrianne from everything and anything, always.

They’ve trained each other. Trained themselves to exist this close. It’s who they are.

Rose is wearing a red halter bathing suit top under a white wifebeater, her legs long and bare in her rolled-up shorts. Her little feet are bare, toes painted a white that makes her skin look warm and dark, even in late spring.

“Your hair’s long,” Adrianne says quietly, pulling her legs up to wrap her arms around them, staring out over the pool and the tentative fun being had by the other outcasts. She’s glad they have each other, are having this night.

Rose’s hair is so thick and wild and beautiful that Adrianne feels it like a sharp pain in her ribs, feels the tingle in her fingertips to touch it, to tame it. It’s dragging the small of Rose’s back, curling in soft tendrils like a storybook princess at the very ends.

Adrianne can’t look at her. She can’t. It’ll break her heart.

“I figure it’s gonna do what it wants. I might as well give up,” Rose replies, modest as always, gathering the living mass of her hair and throwing it over one shoulder, the deep russet of it glinting under the yellowed lights above the pool.

They’re quiet for a long time, Rose watching the wiggle of her toes and Adrianne smiling in melancholic fondness at the chubby kids playing mermaid games with the goth kids in here where it’s safe, where no one threatening is looking on.

They’re probably all wondering what Rose, runner-up for prom queen, is doing in here.

It’s been at least five months since the two of them have spoken. Adrianne is wondering the same thing.

“Sawyer and I broke up,” she announces with a weighted sigh, saying words that Adrianne has dreamt of for years now like she’s telling her that she’s decided to get glasses instead of wearing contacts. Adrianne looks over at her finally, can’t help it, her short hair slipping some out of its little ponytail and catching on her long lashes.

“What?” she manages.

“I was wondering if you already knew,” Rose replies, tracing her fingers over the concrete in light-touch traces, mostly drawing invisible hearts and stars, sometimes writing her own name. Sometimes writing Adrianne’s. “It was right before prom.”

Sawyer hadn’t shown up at Adrianne’s 18th birthday dinner, but only a few people had. Rose hadn’t been one of them either.

“No,” Adrianne says quietly, feeling the wild slam of her heart against her thighs as she hugs her legs tight to her chest, cheek resting on her knees so she can watch Rose now, study her beautiful face. “Are you okay?”

Rose shrugs in the exact way Adrianne expected her to, and the way she won’t meet Adrianne’s eyes tells her just how hurt she is by it still.

“I’ll live,” she finally says.

Adrianne doesn’t know what to say back, doesn’t have the slightest clue on how to deal with this particular situation, and she wishes not for the first time that she could just be straight, just be a normal best friend for Rose, just be someone who can talk to this girl and not be creepy and pining and disgustingly in love.

She’s sure Rose has wished that herself. Many, many times.

“Wanna go outside and smoke the joint I’ve got in my pocket?” Adrianne asks instead.

Rose finally looks over, big brown eyes flashing with deep relief.

“God. Yes.”

 

Turns out the only place safe from drunk graduates fighting and gossiping and fucking is out back near the dumpster.

Adrianne lays down her flannel shirt for Rose to sit on, and they lean back against the building, savoring the relative quiet and the cool of the fresh, midnight air. They pass the joint and the rest of the toxic blend of liquor she has in an A&W root beer bottle, not a word spoken between them as they get used to each other again.

It doesn’t take long.

“Dating anybody?” Rose asks, wrinkling her nose after the fifth pull from the plastic bottle, their fingers brushing as she passes it back to Adrianne.

“I don’t date,” Adrianne informs her, tongue dragging the rim to taste Rose’s spit before swallowing a mouthful of disgusting, effective rotgut. “Not really for me.”

“Fucking anybody?” Rose clarifies, flashing a grin eased onto her face by the alcohol. Adrianne’s drunk enough now to look her full in the face, to want her out loud, at least with her eyes that don’t blink until they absolutely have to.

“Always,” she replies, the word scraping low in her chest as she pinches the last of the joint between her fingers and holds it out for Rose to take a hit from. Rose’s damp mouth touches the side of her fingers, her eyes falling closed as she sucks in one last drag. She counts to ten in her head and lets it out on a sigh, just like she always does.

Adrianne doesn’t know why she ever tried to lie to herself and pretend she could ever get over this girl.

“I have needs, Rosey,” she adds, studying the tensing along the side of Rose’s full mouth, the way her eyes stay closed way after she’s exhaled the last of the smoke in her lungs.

“Which are?” Rose asks, head falling back against the wall, unseeing eyes tipped up to the clear sky above.

Adrianne hates her, just for a second. Hates her for the baiting question, hates her because she knows the honest answer to it, hates her because she knows Adrianne will never, ever say it.

“Pussy,” Adrianne replies, admitting it to Rose for the first time ever. She busies herself by pinching the cherry out of the joint and stubbing it out with the tip of her pinky. She doesn’t make a sound, but the smell of burnt flesh is unmistakable. “And often.”

Another long beat of quiet, one that has Adrianne so tense she’s nearly trembling, that makes her wonder at the possibilities tonight, if Rose is drunk enough and desperate enough to finally ask for what Adrianne has always wanted to give her. Makes her wonder if she has any semblance of dignity left that wouldn’t let her touch Rose, not like this, not with the fallout that would be inevitable.

Rose breaks the silence and answers all of those questions and none of them, all at once.

“When do you leave for UT Austin?” she asks, and she doesn’t even try to keep the hurt out of her voice.

The surprise shows plainly on Adrianne’s face, in her red-rimmed, heavy eyes. She clutches the nearly empty bottle and wishes she had more, had planned for this conversation at all.

“Second week in August,” she manages.

“Why Austin?” Rose asks, her chin trembling in such a small way that no one but Adrianne would ever notice it. Adrianne wishes she could turn and face her, could reach out and touch Rose to comfort her, could hug her and apologize. But it’s not who she is. It’s not who they are. Not anymore.

“Rachel’s down there,” Adrianne starts, but she barely gets the words out before Rose exhales a vicious little scoff, all but snatching the bottle from Adrianne and taking a long drink that empties it. Adrianne’s face falls blank, her chest tightening, but she presses on. Forces herself to. “Kayla and Trish are staying up here, but Rach’s already talked to some girls down there. We’re just gonna start a new band once I get down there. She has... um. She already has an apartment and everything.”

“I thought you said you don’t date,” Rose mutters, staring down into the empty bottle, her hair mostly obscuring her face. 

“It’s not like that between us. It never has been. You remember that girl, Tal? From the show at Black Cherry? She’s going to school at UT, too. They’re, like. Living together. Like, really in love.”

“Good for them,” Rose replies, handing Adrianne the bottle and wiping her hands off on her bare legs. “And good for you.”

Adrianne knows she doesn’t mean it, but she said it. It’s more than Adrianne can usually manage herself.

“Thanks,” she says quietly, screwing the cap back on the bottle so tight, it’ll never come off again. She throws it at the dumpster and listens to it rattle its way down to the bottom. They don’t speak for so long that Adrianne wishes she were sober enough to drive home, just to get miles away from this feeling. 

“Annie?” Rose nearly whispers.

“Yeah?” She rolls her head against the wall to look vaguely in Rose’s direction, not expecting it when she feels it nestle against the side of Rose’s own. Neither of them move.

“Will… can we…”

Silence. Adrianne’s heart feels like a fist against her ribs, trying to snap bone to get out. 

“Ask me,” she breathes, staring at the expired plate on the truck parked near them, abandoned by some employee or serial killer. She doesn’t even feel the way her nails are digging into her thigh to brace herself for whatever this is.

“Can we just… go? Just leave? I don’t… I mean. I know that’s a lot to ask, and you’ve probably got plans this summer, but. I can’t just stay here. I can’t. I’m gonna go crazy, if I do. I’ve gotta do something, and--”

Adrianne smiles to herself.

“You wanna go on a roadtrip? With me?” she asks. Fireflies flicker in the dark brush beyond the property line, the one that separates the fitness center from the trailer park. There’s movement beside Adrianne so suddenly that she nearly falls over. Rose grabs both of Adrianne’s hands, staring at her with those massive eyes that Adrianne would do anything for. Anything.

_Just fucking ask me. Tell me what to do._

“Yes,” Rose whispers, clutching Adrianne’s hands in her own, holding them against her tiny chest, her barely there tits. Adrianne wants to spread her hands and cup them, rub at Rose’s nipples while she’s distracted and more than a little drunk. “Annie, _please_. We’ve got to. I don’t care where. I don’t… it doesn’t matter. Just… we can take my car. I’ve got plenty of money from graduation gifts. Let’s just fucking _go_.”

Adrianne wants to grin at her, wants to do a drunken jig that would land her on her stupid ass, but she holds it all in and raises a single eyebrow at the love of her life.

“When do you wanna go?”

She can feel Rose’s heartbeat against her palms. She wants to set her life by the rhythm.

“Tomorrow?” Rose says, chewing her lip like she does when she knows she’s being unreasonable. “I know it’s kinda last minute, and… and we can leave another day. Yeah, let’s just--”

“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Adrianne replies, promises. She’ll have to quit the job she just got at some cushy call center, have to cancel a few plans and gigs and booty calls, but it’ll take half an hour to do. Tops. None of it matters. There’s nothing else she’d rather do than this. Nothing in the whole fucking world. She shrugs everything else off with a lift of her shoulder. “No problem.”

Her arms are full of warm, soft girl suddenly, and when she feels the slight weight of Rose’s body knocking her backwards, she lets it happen. She lands with a grunt and accepts Rose’s hug and sprawl, her own arms sliding around Rose’s tiny body, clutching at her waist, at fistfuls of thick, burnished auburn hair, her face buried in the safety of Rose’s neck where she smells like she always has.

“Thank you,” Rose whispers in her ear, so earnest that Adrianne swears she can hear the tears in her eyes. She relaxes under her girl and takes everything Rose will give her. 

It’s who they are.

 

\---  
“Bugles, blueberry muffins, sunflower seeds, pepperoni pizza Combos, Snickers ice cream bars--”

“Ohhh!” Rose purrs from under the hood of the car where she’s checking, like… stuff. Adrianne grins before she continues.

“Strawberry soda because you’re gross, cream soda because I’m awesome, lots of water, of course. And…”

She trails off as she digs through the bag and comes up with a package that she rustles like it’s a bag of treats. Rose’s head pops up just like Big Mike’s does, and she gasps when she sees what Adrianne is holding up.

“You remeeeembered,” she beams, closing the hood with a slam and wiping her hands on the cloth tucked in the back pocket of her tiny shorts. She makes grabby hands at Adrianne as she hurries over, and she’s too adorable for Adrianne to tease for long. 

Rose opens the king size pack of Butterfinger BB’s and pops one in her mouth, her cheek pooched out a little as she smiles at Adrianne.

“You’re too good to me,” she says dreamily.

“Impossible,” Adrianne manages to say, busying herself with tucking all the cold stuff into the cooler in the back and praying that Rose doesn’t see how flushed her face is. “Everything look good?”

“Yep!” Rose spins the keys on her finger and grins when Adrianne resurfaces. “You wanna drive first?”

Adrianne takes the keys, her eyes wide with honest shock.

“Wait… _really_?”

“You act like I’m possessive over my car or something,” Rose says, laughing when Adrianne snorts. They pull the doors closed behind them, and Adrianne feels honest-to-fuck goosebumps race up her arms when she starts the car up and feels the engine purr beneath her. 

Rose slides a CD in after shuffling through the stack of mixed playlists that Adrianne had spent the couple of hours before dawn making, and she smirks over at Adrianne when “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls starts up first.

“You’re so gay,” Rose tells her.

Adrianne flicks her tongue a few times between the spread V of her fingers, daring a glance over at Rose’s beautiful bare legs and the Doc Marten mary janes over white socks that she props up on the dash like it’s no big deal. Her hair is tamed down into a thick, messy braid over one shoulder, her mouth is bloody punch red, and her eyes are bright with summer when they meet Adrianne’s.

“Ready when you are,” Rose says, not seeming to mind at all that Adrianne can’t keep her eyes off her soft, naked thighs.

“Where to?” Adrianne asks, tugging her Browns hat down backwards over her short hair and kicking off her flip-flops to let her bare foot graze the gas pedal. Rose shrugs, tugging on a pair of actual baby pink heart-shaped glasses, the Lo to Adrianne’s dirty Humbert.

“Wherever you wanna take me,” Rose replies, and it’s the perfect thing to say. 

She puts the car into drive, pulls on her own fake Ray-Bans, and turns up the music. The wind whips into the car as she edges onto the highway and relaxes back in the seat, feeling more complete in this single second than she has in the the rest of her life, combined.

 

Before this trip, Adrianne hadn’t ever crossed the Mississippi River. They spend a couple of days traversing Kentucky and down into Tennessee, pausing to have lunch in Nashville and buy cowboy hats at a tacky little honky tonk shop on Music Row. 

The warm day starts to darken and cool when they ramble west and come to a stop in Memphis, finding a place to park right on the edge of the Mississippi just as the sun starts to sink low into the water.

They watch the liquid gold shimmer down on the Beale Street Landing, both of them quiet and staring straight ahead at the colors that blaze hot and fiery across the sky. Rose’s hair is alive this evening, lifting in the warm May wind and tickling along Adrianne’s bare shoulder and teasing at her cheek.

And even though she stands nearly a full foot shorter than Adrianne, Rose holds an absolute power over her. She makes Adrianne fall silent when she gets reflective, makes her goofy when Rose needs to smile or is feeling giddy, and tonight, right here, there’s a romance about Rose, poetry to the absolute dark of her eyes that absorbs every other color and reflects only an inner light. 

If this was the first time Adrianne had ever seen her, right now on this curved landing overlooking a river that holds endless stories, she would fall in love with her at first glance. She knows it without hesitation, knows it deep in her bones like she knows that Rose is missing Sawyer, that she’s aching to be held and loved. But she also knows that she’ll never be the one Rose wants it from.

She tries to swallow past the tightness in her throat, but she can’t quite manage it. 

“You wanna stay here for tonight?” she asks quietly, the spell of twilight broken, an inevitable ache settling in around Adrianne, but it’s a familiar pain. One she’s known most of her life.

Rose shakes her head but doesn’t take her eyes off the rush of dark clouds shadowing the purples and pinks of the sunset, doesn’t stop looking at that haunted, dark water.

“Jeff Buckley drowned in the Wolf River right where it meets the Mississippi,” she says, her voice strangely low, far-away. “I want to leave flowers.”

Adrianne reaches over, letting her fingers drag along Rose’s palm where it lays limp in her lap, not stopping until they lace between her smaller ones. She squeezes her hand, letting her thumb drag over all the rings banded around Rose’s fingers.

“Let’s go,” she says.

They listen to _Grace_ in the car on the bank of the Wolf River on Mud Island, red roses left in their wake. 

The seven days that follow are filled with sun-scorched pavement, wind-nested hair, sunburned shoulders, and an ongoing conversation that quietly sews their hearts back together, repairing all of the damage done in the last few years, by both of them.

They share a bed whenever they stop in a motel, taking turns showering and smoking whatever weed they buy off of local burnouts and watching movies at 3am in their bed for the night, doubled over in laughter because of Chris Farley or good pot or remembered stories from their own long history or just from the sudden, overwhelming joy of being near each other. 

Adrianne falls asleep every night with her hand cupping the side of Rose’s neck, thumb tucked up against her pulse just to feel her heartbeat. 

There’s never been a love like this one, and she knows it. There’s nothing any song in the world could teach her now, nothing she could learn from old men with stacks of letters in a box under the bed from The One. She feels restless with love, with the desire for action, any action, even if it’s just carving Rose’s name into her skin or spray painting it on some dilapidated overpass in Mississippi or singing some aching country song loud and confessional in the car, borrowing somebody else’s words to wrap up her heart tidy enough to hand it over to Rose, once and for all.

She stays quiet instead, watching Rose with eyes that hate to close and loving her with every single breath she takes. It’s excruciating. It’s exhausting. She never, ever wants this to end.

\---

They’re at a diner in Abilene, Texas, and Adrianne is eating a fried pickle, scratching a bug-bite, and staring at Rose’s ass in her teeny tiny skirt as she leafs through the song choices on the jukebox when the waitress comes back over and hovers.

Adrianne licks ranch off her thumb and tips her eyes up, feeling caught and curious and annoyed to be interrupted in her perving.

“I’m good,” she assures the girl, her cheek fat with unchewed pickle.

The waitress grins at her, mouth freshly glossed, her tits truly magnificent in the tight white t-shirt she’s wearing that’s tied up in the back. Her curls are long and dark and look fresh, like she hasn’t just been running her cute ass off in a greasy diner for five hours.

“Oh, I know,” the girl, Aly her nametag spells out in purple stickers, says, a hand on her hip that shows off the bare curve of it. Adrianne feels the familiar, low throb of lust course through her as she looks up and into Aly’s dark eyes, finding a knowing smile there.

“What’re you doin’ in a shitty place like this, doll?” Adrianne asks, wiping her fingers off on a napkin and settling back against the wall, letting her long legs sprawl along the booth seat, spreading just butch enough to let Aly know that she gets what this is.

Aly shrugs, her round cheeks pinked up so pretty, and Adri can’t help but notice the sparkly jewel in the girl’s belly button, the chain that drapes around the width of her hips just barely above the low waist of her tiny denim shorts. 

This girl probably has a fucking platinum pussy.

“Waitin’ on you, I guess,” Aly replies with that soft Texas twang that has to be natural, just as real as those big DD tits. “I’m about to go on my break. I get half an hour.”

“You wanna wager any friendly bets?” Adrianne asks, taking a slow drink of toothrot-sweet iced tea and eyefucking this girl harder than any guy would ever dare.

“Like what?” Aly says, looking around in a quick glance before digging a knee into the seat between Adrianne’s legs and leaning in and down, letting Adrianne see straight down into the stretched-out neck of her t-shirt at a pair of knockers that she wants to suffocate between. “How many times you can make my little pussy come before I have to clock back in?”

Adrianne smirks, shifting her hips forward like she’s got a dick to get hard, her eyes taking the scenic route back up to meet Aly’s.

“At least four,” she replies, 

Aly reaches down to lift her apron and tug one of the legs of her shorts up, flashing a shaved, tiny pussy that Adri can already tell is wet. Her fucking mouth floods.

“Okay, five,” she amends.

“They didn’t have _any_ Heart,” Rose says as she falls back into her seat, long waves bouncing on her shoulders, her petal-pink lipstick faded in the center of her soft mouth because of the constant press of her straw. “So I put on a few Loretta Lynn songs.”

She looks up at Aly as she reaches over and grabs a fry from Adrianne’s plate.

“You guys really need to update your music selection,” she tells her before popping the ranch-drenched fry into her mouth.

Adrianne stays where she is, sprawled like a dude in the booth, her eyes dancing back and forth between Aly and Rose, wondering what Aly is gonna do, what she’ll say, how desperate she is to get fucked on her lunch break.

“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll get right on that,” Aly replies with a hard snap of pink gum, the snark of it making Adrianne’s hackles rise. Rose’s eyebrows shoot straight up, her head cocking just a little to the side, and Adrianne has to spin around in her seat and face the right way, carefully keeping her head down so Aly doesn’t see her grin.

“I need some more water,” Rose says back, lifting her glass and shaking it so Aly can hear the ice. “And you never did tell us what kind of pie you have.”

Adrianne can feel the way they’re staring each other down, and she doesn’t even feel bad for how turned on she is.

“Pecan, rhubarb, chocolate, key lime, and I’ve got one piece of cherry pie left,” Aly says, the last bit pointed right at Adrianne like a sharp-clawed fingernail. Adrianne has to bite back a laugh.

“I’ll take the cherry,” she says, slouching back against the seat and glancing up at a furious Aly. “And whatever you want, babe.”

“Chocolate,” Rose says, her smile as sweet as Adrianne’s tea. Aly looks between them a few times before spinning on her knockoff Keds and stalking off, leaving Adrianne watching Rose as much as she can without making direct eye contact.

“Seriously?” Rose says softly, under her breath. She’s got her butterknife in her hand, and she’s spinning it absently as she stares over at Aly behind the counter where she’s talking heatedly to another waitress. “She barely waited thirty fucking seconds for me to walk away before she pounced. Do you send out some kind of pheromones or something?”

Adrianne shrugs, plenty pleased with herself, and she leans back a little bit more and tugs her jeans up by a belt loop, just needing the slight pressure of the seam against her clit.

“I dunno,” she replies, watching Rose unabashedly now. “Do I?”

Rose’s brown eyes round out as they dart up and catch Adrianne’s, her empty cup clattering back to the table.

“I’m just... “ Rose licks her lips, her nails clicking along the side of the plastic cup, making the ice rustle. “How did she know that we aren’t together? I mean, how rude would that be? She wasn’t even that fucking subtle.”

“What would you do?” Adrianne can’t keep from asking, her heart leaping up into her throat no matter how casual she sounds. “To make her think we were together?”

“It’s not…” Rose sighs heavy enough to make a few people look over, and the certainty that Rose will never answer the question makes Adrianne’s heart sink back down where it belongs. She curls back in around her plate, picking at her fries. “That’s not the point. She just _assumed_. She didn’t even ask any super obvious questions to find out.”

“Maybe she could just tell,” Adrianne mutters, wiping her hands off on a napkin one last time before tossing it onto the plate and pushing it towards the end of the table. Rose doesn’t respond to that, doesn’t make a sound, and the sudden quiet has Adrianne tense, dying to get up and away from this sudden, painful conversation.

“Do you wanna, like. Go with her?” Rose asks, and it’s soft enough that Adrianne can tell she’s really asking. “Because you can, if you want to. I won’t be, like. Upset or anything.”

Adrianne looks up again because she’s a sucker, because she can’t help it, and she knows her eyes are pleading in ways her mouth never could: 

_Get mad. Get jealous._ Tell _me you’re jealous. Tell me I’m yours._

“No,” Adrianne says before she can even really think about it. There’s no hesitation. “I don’t want to. I want to stay here with you.”

Rose looks vulnerable and defensive, her small body curled up tight, shoulders drawn in.

“Even if it means you aren’t gonna get any tonight?”

She could joke, could make this easier, make them both laugh it off and probably save what’s left of their evening, but it’s too close to home, too near to everything that hurts.

Adrianne is stunned by the sorrow that sweeps through her, twisting up her guts until she’s sure she’s going to puke.

“I never want to be anywhere else, with anybody else, no matter what,” she tells Rose softly, and it’s so honest that her hand is trembling where it’s hidden in her lap beneath the table. “No matter what.”

Rose is quiet again, is always quiet when Adrianne gets like this, when she’s giving up too much bare-faced truth and it’s too much for Rose to swallow. Adrianne used to think it was because Rose was shy about being on the receiving end of so much painful sincerity, but she knows now that Rose is just too kind to find a way to say she’s sorry she doesn’t have anything to give to Adrianne in return.

Aly comes back with two plates of pie and a glass of water so full that it spills when it’s set down hard on the table. Adrianne grabs her plate without looking up, listening to Loretta Lynn ache over men who done her wrong when she knows damn well that nobody can break a heart like a woman can.

 

\---

 

It’s mostly music and wind through New Mexico and Arizona, the cold nights quiet between them in cheap motel beds. Adrianne wraps around Rose to keep her warm and stirs awake the second Rose shifts and stretches in the mornings, the easy familiarity between them replaced by tight smiles and side-stepping in their tight quarters.

By the time they hit San Diego and the PCH, Adrianne is chainsmoking as she flies up the long, twisted road beside the ocean, breathing in the salt air and trying not to be tempted by the sharp cliffs that lead straight down to it. 

 

“When did you know?” Rose asks after a fun, expensive day in Los Angeles, both of them burden with stacks of new CDs back in the car and bags of porny absurdities from the Hustler store. They’re sitting in the sand next to the Santa Monica Pier, their bare feet sinking in and getting covered by lazy incoming of the tide.

Adrianne looks over from where she’s been trying to light a cigarette in the rushing ocean breeze for ten minutes, helplessly caught up in the way the colors from the ferris wheel behind Rose light her up, show her to Adrianne even in the cloudy dark of a new moon night.

“When did I know what?”

Rose is staring straight into the black water of the ocean, Adrianne’s hoodie pulled tight around her, covering her hands. She’s shivering, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“That you’re a lesbian,” Rose says, for the very first time. Adrianne couldn’t look away from her if the Pier collapsed and sank in its entirety into the Pacific Ocean.

“When did I know for sure? The first time we watched _Desperado_ at my place and I saw Salma Hayek.”

Rose glances over, a smile mostly obscured by the lifted dance of her impossibly long hair, but Adrianne sees it anyway.

“When did I suspect?” Adrianne continues, feeling braver in the dark, just like she always has. She looks back at the ocean and tries to school her face into anything besides vulnerability. “The first day you walked into Ms. Cooper’s class.”

Rose laughs, a short, surprised noise, and she reaches up to gather her hair with an impatient twist, distracted for a minute as she tames it all back in a loose knot that still stretches the expanse of her small back.

“You’re such a sweet-talker,” Rose says with a shake of her head, and Adrianne can’t tell if Rose really believes her or not. 

“Tell me about Sawyer,” Adrianne replies, rushing the words out like a ripped Band-aid. She doesn’t want to know, not ever, but she needs to. There’s a pause filled with the rush of the tide and the far-off noise from the Pier, but Adrianne swears she can hear Rose’s wistful smile in it.

“He kissed me that night when your dad forgot to take me to cheer practice. When we were eleven? I mean… you probably don’t remember that, but.” She’s smiling, all little girl and shy like she used to be, her long legs hugged tighter to her chest. “He did it right there in the hallway. It was dark, and I was about to shove him away when he just grabbed me and kissed me. And I remembered thinking that I wasn’t even ready, I didn’t even know it was gonna happen, so I didn’t have time to remember it.”

“I know how much you like to plan things,” Adrianne manages to say with a weak smile. She wants to murder her brother in some slow, creative way, wants him to know it’s her doing it. And why.

“Nothing really happened for a couple of years after that. Just little kisses and stuff. Kid stuff. And when I turned thirteen, it was like… he got a permission slip or something. And so… we started… yanno. Just messing around. We made it official summer before high school.”

She’s smiling in a way she can’t seem to help, her fingers twisting up together against her shins. She’s thousands of miles away now, years away, her face soft and young as she remembers.

“He wanted to tell you. He always did, but… I couldn’t. I wanted to, Annie. I almost did a hundred times. But… but I knew that…” Rose licks her lips, searching out words and choosing them carefully while Adrianne watches, stone-still and breath held. “I knew you two never really got along, and… and there’s no way you would’ve been happy about it. It was just… easier. For everybody. Not telling you.”

“When’s the first time he--”

“Annie,” Rose breaks in. Pleads. The wind rushes through loud enough to steal away any words they’d want to give each other. Adrianne watches the storm roll in over the ocean, watches the faraway flicker of lightning.

“Tell me,” Adrianne says, braced like she’s about to be punched.

I was thirteen,” Rose says like an apology, her voice so small, Adrianne barely hears the number. “A couple of days after my birthday p--”

“Okay,” Adrianne interrupts, digging her nails into her shins until she feels skin break under each one. “Okay, that’s… that’s all I need to know.”

God knows how many times Sawyer has laughed at her behind her back over the years. How many times he’s seen Adrianne pining over Rose and known full well and for years what Rose feels like inside, how she tastes, what makes her come. 

He took her virginity. Her asshole of a brother.

“Annie, you’re shaking,” Rose says, shifting closer in the sand on the stolen motel towel they’d spread out, and she tips her body down automatically for Adrianne to wrap her arm around her shoulders.

And she does, because she’s pathetic. Because this is who she is.

“Do you still love him?” she asks, not bothering to hide how much her chin is trembling. Maybe she’s known for years and years, somehow. Maybe she’s always known their secret, but she’s kept it from herself. Rose’s silence, as always, answers better than any words.

“We should go,” Adrianne says suddenly, pushing up from the sand and almost knocking Rose over in her rush. Rose rights herself and gets to her feet, shaking the towel off and stepping back into her slip-on Vans.

“I’ll drive,” Rose offers, her hand out for the keys that Adrianne drops in her palm. They walk back to the car without another word between them. 

At a certain point, there’s nothing left to say.

 

\---

 

Every single beach in California is choked with tourists, and it’s only after they spend the day exploring the Redwood National Forest in Del Norte county that they decide to scratch off an item on Rose’s bucketlist: sleep on a beach.

They trek north of Crescent City and pass up Pebble Beach in search of a supposedly desolate beach called Point St. George. Adrianne spots the abandoned lighthouse off the coast just before it gets too dark, and they were completely unprepared for how freezing cold it was gonna be here the first week of June.

The sky is clear and stunning with white-hot stars, the Milky Way clearly visible in a streak across the dark velvet above. Adrianne drags more blankets from the car and makes a small fire using her dad’s survival skills and a kit she’d bought at Wal-Mart back in Arizona. Rose stops shivering enough to fall asleep, and Adrianne lays practically on top of her, freezing her own ass off, but it doesn’t matter.

Her girl is warm.

She drifts in and out of sleep, waking some time before dawn to watch the sky lighten in the sunrise behind her, the yellow tendrils of it not reaching the horizon above the ocean for nearly an hour.

The sound of Rose breathing against the eternal backdrop of the tide makes Adrianne feel ancient, like maybe this is how the first love story ever went, too. She presses her chapped lips to Rose’s sun-darkened, freckled cheek, exhaling warmth through her nose over her girl’s skin and trying her best to keep her hips still where she’s nestled tight against Rose’s ass.

It wouldn’t take much to get off. Not much at all.

The sound of a car pulling into the lot beside the old Coast Guard building and the double slam of doors makes Adrianne tense up. She mentally locates the keys (in her pocket) and berates herself for not bringing the knife she’d tucked into the glove compartment before they’d left Ohio.

“Oh, man. It’s fuckin’ _beautiful_ out here today!”

“Worth haulin’ your hungover ass outta bed, bro?”

“Totally. Totally.” 

Adrianne stays perfectly still and watches as two bros pad right past them in the sand, just a couple of tight-bodied, long-haired surfer dudes who don’t even look over at them. They’re both carrying long boards and staring at the ocean like a long-lost lover, one of them stopping to tug his long, wild sun-white hair back with a hot pink tie.

“Man, I just wanna spend the whole day out here,” he sighs, his lean lifting and falling with it. The other guy looks over, grin brighter than the morning sun warming everything up behind them, his green eyes startlingly vivid on such a dark, beautiful face.

“We can do whatever you want,” green eyes says with so much tenderness that Adrianne actually raises her eyebrows.

They lean in at the same time and kiss, the tall, green-eyed dude grabbing the little blond one around his narrow waist and pulling him in. Adrianne can see hot flashes of tongue between their mouths, can see the way the big guy’s gripping at the little one’s ass through his wetsuit, and she hopes somewhere in the back of her lizard brain that they fuck right here, where she can see them.

“You’ve gotta earn my ass today,” the blond says with a grin, and he grips his board tight and takes off toward the ocean. The big dude laughs and follows right behind them, neither of them stopping until they’re splashing in the water and stretching out on their boards to paddle deeper.

Adrianne’s been so absorbed in them that she hadn’t even noticed that Rose is awake, too.

“That was so hot,” Rose mumbles, shifting under Adrianne, her ass pressing tight to Adrianne’s crotch. She digs her hips forward and pretends she’s stretching, savoring the pressure against her cunt.

“At least we know they’re not gonna kill us and rape us,” Adrianne replies, pressing a quick kiss to Rose’s jaw and sitting up so the girl can breathe. She grabs the bottle of water next to their little bed and takes a long drink, her eyes on the boys now far out in the water, riding the waves with such ease that it’s obvious they’re lifers.

“Well, they might still kill us,” Rose says, sitting up herself. Her nipples are hard even though the layers she’d piled on last night, and Adrianne stares at them while Rose re-braids her hair and finishes the water Adrianne hands her. “But I doubt it.”

“Why?” She fishes around in her bag and hands Rose a bag of trail mix, silently begging her to eat something.

“They’re surfers,” Rose shrugs, opening the bag and pulling out a few almonds. “They’re probably high.”

“Have you never seen _Point Break_?” Adrianne asks her, grinning when Rose laughs. They eat a hippie breakfast and finish another bottle of water together before taking turns to go pee behind a jut of rocks where the surfers can’t see them. The lighthouse is clear now in the bright sun, and Rose and Adrianne get brave and warm enough to strip down their layers to the bathing suits underneath so they can stretch out and let the heat soak into their skin.

It’s maybe an hour or so later when the surfers come out of the water, and they stop this time when they get close.

“Did you two sleep out here?” the blond asks, stretching his board out beside Rose and Adri’s little camp and sitting on it. He watches as his big, buff friend continues on to the turquoise Jeep parked beside Rose’s Nova, his eyes on the guy’s tight ass in his now clinging wetsuit.

“Yeah,” Rose says, friendly enough with the knowledge that these two are at least a little gay. “It was on my bucketlist.”

“It was cold as shit, wasn’t it?!” His eyes are a shock-blue that looks unnatural, his blond hair dark with seawater and hanging around his beautiful face. He’s gotta be a model or something. Adrianne appreciates the way he keeps his eyes on their faces and doesn’t even glance an inch lower.

“Annie kept me warm,” Rose replies, watching with interest when the other guy comes back, armed with towels and blankets and bags. “We didn’t expect it to be that cold here in the summertime.”

“Yeah, this beach is weird, man. Real weird. Jace thinks it’s haunted.” Blondie looks up and grins at his friend, his whole face softening as he watches the guy spread out a blanket right next to Adri and Rose’s and start to peel down his wetsuit until it’s just hanging around his waist.

“It _is_ haunted,” the big guy says matter-of-factly. “I told you, babe. I saw spirits out here one night. No fuckin’ joke.”

“What were you on?” the little one asks, neither of them paying any attention to the girls as they dry off and settle in close to each other, both grinning as their faces get closer.

“Shut up,” Jace mumbles, his smile disgustingly huge before he kisses the blond boy. 

“Were they in the water?” Rose asks, leaning forward with interest. Adrianne can tell by the way she’s favoring her left side that her right shoulder is aching, probably from having a nearly six-foot, blonde blanket draped over her all night. She scoots up behind Rose and slides her hands up onto her shoulders, massaging gently at the tight muscles bunched up there.

“Yeah,” Jace replies, glancing up at Rose before he resumes his search in the bag he’d brought. “Two of ‘em. I looked it up when I got back home, too. Two dudes drowned out here back in the late 80s. Best friends.”

“Some say they haunt the waters together. Hangin’ ten for eternity,” blondie says solemnly, only his exaggerated California surfer boy accent giving away the fact that he’s totally fuckin’ joking. 

“Ignore my brother,” Jace says with a hard roll of his eyes, not looking over as he tosses a sandwich baggie at the other boy.

Adrianne’s eyes widen in rare shock.

“Brother?” she asks.

“Mm,” Jace replies, holding out another baggie to her and Rose: two biscuits with some kind of meat on them, still warm. Rose snatches it before Adrianne can even process. “Mom used to foster kids. Landon ended up staying with us. We adopted him.”

Adrianne takes a sandwich from Rose distractedly, holding it in her lap as she looks between the guys.

“So… so you guys are brothers. I mean… not _actual_ brothers, but--”

“We are real brothers,” Landon says, lowering his breakfast sandwich from where he was just about to take a big bite, his big blue eyes locked on Adrianne’s. “It doesn’t matter if we’re not related, man. We’re brothers at heart. That’s the most important.”

Adrianne glances at Jace, catching his sparkle-eyed amusement as he chews his own food, like he’s waiting on her to call them out.

“So… you kiss your brother? That’s… wow. Where are y’all from? Alabama?” Adrianne teases, smiling so they know she’s kidding, and the big guy laughs so loud, it echoes off the rocks dotting the beach around them.

“We’re special brothers, that’s for sure,” Jace says, swallowing down his food with big gulps of blue Gatorade. He offers Adrianne the bottle, and she takes it. “He’s my boy. I’ve always taken care of him.”

“And he’s _very_ good at it,” Landon assures them, smirking hard enough to call up a dimple. “Anyway. Yeah, I’m Landon. This is my brother, Jason.”

“Adrianne,” she replies, handing Rose the Gatorade and nodding over at her. “This is Rose. We’re just here for the day. On a roadtrip.”

“Ohh, us, too!” Landon says, his voice so soft, so iconically gay that Adrianne has no problem picturing him taking the big cock Jason inevitably has on a nightly basis. “Jace just finally decided where he wants to go to college, and so we wanted to take a trip before he goes away and leaves me all alone.”

“You won’t be alone,” Jason grumbles, like this is an old argument. “Mom’ll be there.”

“Where are you guys--”

“Iowa,” Landon says with a wrinkled nose. “Like… for real. But I’m from out here. From a town called Ukiah. When Mama took me in, we used to spend our summers up here in Crescent City, just so I wouldn’t be so homesick. And Jace was born in Honolulu, so he’s been surfing, like, his whole life.”

“There’s never anybody on this beach,” Jason tells them, licking his fingers clean of the grease from his juicy pork sandwich, his eyes on Adrianne like he can see every single thought in her mind. “We had big plans today.”

“Oh, we can leave,” Rose says quickly, already stuffing her sandwich back in the bag. “We didn’t know--”

“Maybe we wanna stay and watch,” Adrianne cuts in, smirking at Jason who shark-grins at her, eyes sparkling with approval. 

“Do you?” Jason asks, holding her gaze, wadding up a paper towel in his big fist and raising his eyebrows at her.

“Yeah,” Rose answers, surprising everybody. Adrianne looks over with a smirk before turning her attention back to Jason. 

“Hell, yeah,” Adrianne adds, leaning back against the rock near their little bed, the one that had protected them from the bulk of last night’s wind. Rose joins her, pulling her sandwich back out and eating it quietly, little pulled-off bites between her fingers.

The second Jason looks over at Landon, Rose and Adrianne are completely forgotten. They sit very still beside each other for nearly two hours, watching as a hulking god of a man disassembles a delicate blond boy who can’t be more than sixteen years old, who shivers when Jason plasters himself against his back and grinds his cock in so deep that Landon’s sobs echo over the whole, empty beach, the wind and the waves only drowning out the loudest of his cries.

Adrianne gets soaking wet watching them but doesn’t touch herself, wouldn’t even dream of it. She’s too aware of Rose beside her, too aware of the heat from her skin and the way her tiny chest heaves and how she subconsciously spreads her legs like she wants to go next.

It’s the hungry, sweet whisper of “get that dick, little brother” from Jason’s pink mouth that makes Adrianne shiver out something like a climax without even touching her cunt, her mouth flooding with spit and blood from biting down on the inside of her cheek to keep from moaning.

 

They all doze until mid-afternoon, waking with sunburned shoulders and needing something cold to drink. Jason and Landon invite them back to the beach house that belongs to their family a few miles away, and maybe it’s because Adrianne knows Landon has Jason’s spunk dripping down the inside of his thighs that she trusts them enough with her little Rose’s life to say yes.

Jason makes homemade pizza with more of that insanely delicious pork (that Landon tells them proudly Jason roasted himself) and pineapple, and they smoke three fat joints and devour two whole pizzas while they watch telenovelas on mute and make up dialogue themselves. 

Landon leaves just before sunset, showered and smelling good and announcing that he’s going to see his Daddy, and Jason looks so perfectly okay with it that Adrianne doesn’t ask.

She takes a long shower in the tiny bathroom and actually shaves her legs, adding some of the guys’ conditioner to the ends of her hair so it’s soft and smells like coconut when she comes out. When she comes back out into the livingroom in pajama pants and a clean wifebeater, Rose is sitting on the floor in front of Jason with her shirt off, and Jason is massaging her tiny breasts.

Adrianne comes to a full stop in the doorway, her mouth dropping open.

“What are you--”

“It’s okay,” Rose says, and Adrianne can tell she’s high because she sounds dreamy, not self-conscious at all. “I told him he could.”

Jason is cross-legged on the couch behind Rose, her tits completely engulfed in his massive hands. There’s a strange purity to his face when he looks up at Adrianne, something so inviting and honest that Adrianne finds herself relaxing, walking over and sitting down on the floor next to Rose so she can watch.

“Women carry tension in so many places,” Jason tells Adrianne, his voice quiet to suit the candle-lit darkness of the room, the low hum of atmospheric rock coming from speakers somewhere. “Most women hold so many emotions in that it has to go somewhere. And it usually manifests in tightness held all over your bodies.”

“Feels good,” Rose mumbles, melting back against the couch, her chest arched out as Jason kneads her little A-cups that have been the star of Adrianne’s panty-soaked dreams for the last ten years. 

“I thought you were gay,” Adrianne manages to say, staring at the glimpses of Rose’s tits that she gets, the little heartmark there that matches her own.

“I’m a lot of things. But I’m not any one thing,” Jason replies, hands moving back up to Rose’s shoulders now, leaving her breasts on full, mouth-watering display. Adrianne shifts where she’s stationed beside Rose, forcing her hands to stay where they are on her knees. 

“That’s such a bullshit stoner thing to say,” Adrianne says, not caring that Jason sees her staring at Rose, not caring if Rose catches her, too. Jason laughs, and Adrianne doesn’t even smile in reaction.

“Prolly,” he admits, gathering all of Rose’s hair up so he can massage her neck. “But it’s true. Just because I have sex with guys doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

“Do you sleep with girls?” Rose asks, her soft bottom lip caught between her teeth, face flushed and nipples hard from how good Jason apparently is with his hands. Adrianne feels conflicted, feels the need to run, to go hide in another room while whatever is about to happen inevitably plays out, but the need to protect Rose, to get her away from this giant heartbreaker of a surfer dude overpowers anything else. 

She’s not leaving.

“I have sex with anyone I find beautiful. It doesn’t really matter to me how they identify. All I need is consent, and I’m down.” He’s watching Adrianne now; a glance up at his lovely face confirms it. He seems curious, like he sees something Adrianne just couldn’t hide quick enough. “What about you ladies? Do you have labels?”

“I’m straight,” Rose is quick to say, and Adrianne flinches at it. She looks away from Jason’s suddenly sympathetic expression, focusing on her bitten-down fingernails, on the new callouses from holding a steering wheel so many hours every day.

“And you?” Jason asks Adrianne quietly.

“Gay,” Adrianne replies, taking a deep breath that she lets out in a heavy sigh. She meets his eyes again, lets him see the pain there. “Very, very gay.”

“I have a feeling you two have known each other for a long time. Like me and Landon,” he says to her, running his hands slowly up and down Rose’s back as she leans forward to give him more room.

“Since we were seven,” Rose sighs, curling down and wrapping her arms around her own legs, her eyes closed so Adrianne and Jason can talk silently with their own without her knowing. He beckons Adrianne closer with a lift of his head, his smile soft and strangely kindred; he understands her. She has no fucking idea how, maybe it’s the weird NorCal pot they smoked, but she can feel it.

“I bet Adrianne knows you better than anybody,” Jason says as Adrianne shifts forward, practically tucked up against Rose at Jason’s feet.

“Better than anybody in the world,” Rose agrees, her voice muffled by her own bare thighs. “Even though I’ve been with her brother for, like. Seven years.”

Another pained flick of green eyes, and Adrianne forces herself to meet his gaze. His mouth lifts in a barely-there smile, and she shakes her head back, forcing away the tears suddenly burning at the back of her eyes.

She’s never smoking pot again.

“You aren’t with him right now,” Jason replies, stroking Rose’s hair back, thick fingers tickling along the nape of her neck. “You’re here, with us. With me and your Annie.”

“My Annie,” Rose sighs, tipping her head to the side for the fingers that trail down her neck, dance along her collarbone. 

“I bet she knows where you ache better than anybody else, too,” Jason says, his voice grit-low, eyes burning into Adrianne’s so intensely that Adrianne feels goosebumps dancing along her arms. “She could make you feel so good. I know she could.”

“Yeah,” Rose replies, leaning back against the couch and opening her eyes, drawing Adrianne’s gaze down to her favorite face in the world, to those eyes that own her entire fucking soul. Adrianne holds her breath, her knee pressed against Rose’s shin, hands clutching her cotton sleep pants in fists. Rose’s long lashes laze down and touch her cheeks. “Annie, please.”

She doesn’t ask if Rose is sure, doesn’t hesitate. Just curls down to make up the distance between their mouths and licks into Rose’s, her hands flying up to Rose’s naked thighs, to the endless expanse of soft skin there, just enough to grip and hold tight.

Jason is completely silent, his hands back in his own lap now, and Adrianne has never been more grateful for another person in her entire fucking life.

Rose’s mouth is burning hot inside, the flick of her tongue tragically unfamiliar, the taste of her like a childhood flavor that Adrianne can just barely recall. The reminder that her brother’s been here, that he’d been here before anybody else has Adrianne surging forward, pressing Rose hard to the couch and Jason’s legs, her thumbs on Rose’s jaw to force her mouth open wider. She plunges into her mouth and moans when she feels the rush of Rose’s tongue under her own, and the way Rose shivers when she sinks her teeth into that already bitten-red bottom lip makes Adrianne wish she had the fat, uncut cock between Jason’s legs.

She breaks the kiss to look up at him where he’s seated a few feet above them, and he doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s hard in his loose jeans, that he’s watching them just like Rose and Adrianne had watched him with his brother earlier today.

“Tell me what you need,” he says quietly.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks, her hand cupping the back of Rose’s head while Rose kisses at Adrianne’s throat, at a place behind her ear that has Adrianne groaning, her eyes fluttering. 

He shakes his head.

“I’m clean,” he replies, not moving at all, but the permission is there in his eyes. “And I shoot blanks.”

Adrianne raises an eyebrow.

“I’ll tell you the story sometime,” he assures her, strangely placing himself in Adrianne’s life for the long haul without either of them knowing it. “Just… tell me what you need me to do.”

“Go strip and get on the bed,” Adrianne tells him, her hand tightening in Rose’s hair while Rose drags her teeth over Adrianne’s throat, nipping at skin so sweetly that Adrianne has already soaked her new underwear. “And… and don’t touch her. No matter what. You can’t touch her.”

Jason nods, resting an affectionate hand on the top of Adrianne’s damp head before he climbs up from the couch and drifts away, down the hall.

They both turn to watch him go, and Rose is smiling when she looks back at Adrianne.

“Is this okay?” Rose asks, little hand sliding up to cup Adrianne’s cheek, her eyes darker than Adrianne’s ever seen in the far-off flicker from the candles.

“God,” Adrianne groans, overcome with too many confessions to even find the right thing to say back. She yanks Rose in against her, careful not to bruise with her too-eager hands when they kiss again. She follows when Rose leans back against the hardwood floor, and the place between Rose’s thighs is so warm that Adrianne honest to God feels like crying.

_I’ve wanted this_ , she wants to say, wishes she had the courage to say, _wanted you, my whole life._

“Do whatever you want,” Rose whispers against her mouth, trembling fingers tucking Adrianne’s wet hair behind her ears as they search each other’s eyes. “Just… do whatever you want to me, Annie. Just touch me. God, please, just--”

Rose is completely bare of makeup, her mouth the deep pink she was born with, and so Adrianne only tastes skin when she leaves her lips behind to kiss down her chin and her throat, heading for her tits probably too fast, but for her, this is long overdue.

The first thing she finds is the little heart-shaped birthmark beside her left nipple where it’s always been, the reminder to Adrianne that this, she and Rose, are fated.

“You’re beautiful,” Adrianne whispers just before she closes her eyes and presses a kiss to that tiny heartmark, the one that matches her very own on her thigh, permanent best friends necklaces.

She presses her hips down hard between Rose’s legs, curls her back, and cups Rose’s small tits together so she can suck back and forth between her nipples. Rose arches under her, wearing nothing but a tiny slip of black panties, and the sounds she makes are ones Adrianne could never have imagined.

There’s an ache in Rose’s voice that Adrianne never had the heart to put there, even in her wettest dreams.

She yanks the panties off and tosses them up onto the couch, reminding herself to tuck them into her own bag later, because those fuckers are coming home with her forever. She sits back and shoves Rose’s legs apart, seeing the tiny pink cunt she’s always known Rose had but that she’s never seen for herself. Not like this.

She’s waxed completely bare, and the deep, flushed pink that comes into view when Adrianne spreads her pussy, when she pushes her lips back to look at the warm little hole pulsing for attention, she can’t help but growl so soft and low in her chest.

“Ohmygod, Rosey,” she sighs.

Rose whimpers, her feet slipping on the floor as she tries to open her legs even wider, and she’s flushed all the way down to her tits as she writhes against Adrianne’s strong hands, trying to grind against where they’re holding her wide open so she can stare at her pussy.

“You’re so tight,” Adrianne tells her, keeping her hands where they are as she slides down to her stomach between Rose’s legs, getting close enough that she can smell her, feel the heat coming off of her. She runs her thumbs up and down Rose’s tiny outer lips, massaging her little cunt and savoring the way it trembles because of it, gets wetter every fucking second.

“Lick me,” Rose begs, holding onto Adrianne’s face, trying to pull her in as she lifts her hips. “Just… Annie, please.”

“Say it,” Adrianne says, her mouth watering, only inches away. She can smell the salty sweetness of her, and she wants to sink her fucking teeth in.

“Eat my pussy,” Rose says, soft like she’s shy, like she’s a virgin. Adrianne spreads her even wider and dips down low, letting her tongue slide out to lick around the deepest pink of her cunt, just inside of her hole that looks like it might be tight around a fucking thumb. 

Rose jolts right up off the floor, her feet skidding across the wood, her hands pushing back up into Adrianne’s hair and holding on tight.

Adrianne closes her eyes, takes a deep breath of the most beautiful pussy she’ll ever see, and dives in.

She licks in like she’s exploring, tonguing wet and starved between her inner and outer lips, just above and under her tiny little clit, and then down to her barely-there taint and the underage-tightness of her wink of an asshole. Rose is humping up off the floor, her pussy so wet that Adrianne can barely keep up, can barely lick it all down fast enough, and she nearly grins when Rose makes the most spoiled little girl noise and yanks hard on Adrianne’s hair, mashing her face into soaking wet pink.

“Suck my clit,” she orders, or tries to, but it comes out as a whine. 

“If I can even find it,” Adrianne says with a smirk, using her slick fingers to push up on the hood, trying to get at the whole length of her clit so she can get her mouth on it. “Got a little babydoll clit.”

“You love it,” Rose replies warmly, petting Adrianne’s hair like they’re watching a movie, nails dragging over her scalp. Adrianne looks up at her and smiles, holding her beautiful eyes as she presses the softest, most worshipful kiss to the very tip of Rose’s clit.

“Love every fucking bit of you,” Adrianne tells her, tipping her face up to nuzzle her nose right under the tight little knot of it before she sucks it gently into her mouth, letting it nestle between her top lip and her tongue so she can tonguefuck it with long, pulling sucks in between, moving her head like she’s bobbing on a dick. 

Rose falls apart so quickly that Adrianne is stunned, has to grip hard at Rose’s thighs and lift up to follow the thrash of Rose’s little body, but she keeps her mouth right where it is, doesn’t let up on the pressure or the rhythm even as Rose floods her mouth with come, her screams ragged and painful.

She shoves Rose’s legs back towards her chest, gathering them up with one hand so she can slide the right one down and rub at Rose’s throbbing little cunt, feeling the hot rush of blood pulsing there as she comes down from her first orgasm.

She wants to ask if Sawyer’s ever made her come like that. Wants to know if she even remembers Sawyer’s fucking name right now.

It’s a tight fucking fit for the two long fingers Adrianne feeds into Rose’s pussy, but she’s wet enough that it squelches as she tucks them in all the way to the knuckles, her heartbeat now all around Adrianne’s fingers.

“Oh, god,” Rose whispers, her back arched, tits standing straight up and flushed deep pink, her face buried behind her hands as she shoves down against Adrianne’s fingers, trying to get them deeper somehow. “ _Annie._ Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmy--”

She sobs, honest to fucking God sobs when Adrianne curls her fingers and starts to fuck her, pulling hard at her suffocatingly tight insides and forcing a third finger inside of her to make it feel nice and full. She spreads them out and aims right up against the spongy, sopping wet knot of her g-spot, knowing she’s got it dead-on when she starts to hear the loud suck of her pussy as it gushes, and all she can do is lower her face and latch on, tonguing at her clit and drinking down as much come as she can swallow while she fucks her through two more orgasms, only stopping when Rose tries to turn on her side and can’t stop shaking.

“C’mere, Rosey. God, c’mere, my love,” Adrianne whispers, her whole face soaked, her fingers still tucked into pulsing warmth as she wraps her free arm around Rose and gathers her up, nuzzling in until their mouths find each other, and they’re kissing again, soaked with sweat and pussyjuice and spit and it’s so much more intense now, so much sweeter.

“Give me one more and I’ll give you a break,” Adrianne promises, digging her forehead against Rose’s and kissing over and over at her panting, slack mouth.

“Annie, I can’t--”

“Just one more,” Adrianne whispers, pulling her fingers out of Rose’s pussy and finding her now-swollen clit with them, letting them press in hard and rub at it in a quick, tight circle. 

Rose whines, her thighs snapping up closed together around Adrianne’s arm, her ass lifting up off the floor again as she chases Adrianne’s hand or tries without success to get away from it. Her eyes are shut tight, her eyebrows pulled together hard, sweat pooled up at the base of her bitten-raw throat, and she’s almost entirely silent during her fourth fucking orgasm, only letting out a deep-held sob at the very end of it that sounds scraped out of her guts.

Adrianne spreads her hand out and holds onto Rose’s cunt, letting it pulse and throb under her soaked, wrinkled fingertips, and Rose goes completely limp beneath her, doesn’t fight it when Adrianne licks deep into her mouth and sucks on her tongue.

She’s still completely dressed when she stands up with Rose in her arms, such a slight weight that it almost makes Adrianne frantic, almost makes her want to cancel her enrollment at UT Austin and stay in godforsaken Toledo just to keep this girl safe, just to take care of her the way she’s always wanted to and that maybe Rose will let her now.

There are more candles lit in the bedroom alongside fabric-draped lamps, and there’s sandalwood incense burning on some kind of altar in the corner. Jason Momoa is on the massive, king-sized bed, completely naked with a cock as thick and long and beautiful as the rest of him standing straight up from between his legs, the tip of it already glistening in the candlelight.

“If I was a dude, I’d wanna look exactly like you,” Adrianne tells him, her little love tucked up tight and barely conscious in her arms. Jason grins, his hair spread in wild curls on the pillow behind him, one of his big hands stealing down to give his cock a slow downstroke and a squeeze at the base.

“Funny,” Jason says, watching as Adrianne lays Rose out carefully on the bed beside him and starts to strip down herself, finally, “that’s kinda the first thing I wanted to say to you, too.”

She shoves her pants down off her hips and stands naked in front of a guy for the first time in her life, and she’s nervous like she’s about to sit on that fat dick of his.

“I don’t know how to explain to you that…” She looks down at Rose who is awake now, who is slick-thighed and sprawled next to Jason, her eyes wet, and she’s staring right up at Adrianne, listening to every word.

“You don’t have to,” Jason says, and Adrianne believes him. Really, truly believes him. “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Nothing more.”

“Show me,” Rose says, drawing Adrianne’s attention right back down to her. She’s amazed to find that Rose is staring at her pussy, at the trimmed-short hair hiding most everything but the swollen tip of her fat clit and the fact that she’s soaking wet already. She lifts one leg and props it on the edge of the bed so she can reach between her legs and spread her lips, showing Rose everything, letting her see just how much she’s fucking dripping already.

Rose grabs Adrianne’s leg and pulls her closer, not stopping until Adrianne’s clit bumps her nose and Adrianne gasps like she’s been punched, her whole body going taut. She closes her eyes when she feels Rose’s tongue start to lick around in her cunt, exploring with deep, tonguing licks that makes Adrianne shudder, her breath held as she lowers down to squat over Rose’s face, letting her get in deeper, if she wants.

Rose moans, soft and wet-mouthed, and Adrianne can’t help but reach down to rub her own clit, pushing it back and forth with her middle finger as she starts to ride Rose’s tongue, her head tipped back, the one leg she’s standing on shaking hard the closer she gets to coming.

A big, iron-grip hand clamps down on her thigh when she starts to come, and she would’ve hit the fucking floor if Jason hadn’t caught her. She bares her teeth and screams out her orgasm, feeling feral and dangerous as she pinches her clit hard and smashes her pussy into Rose’s mouth, letting her beautiful face get nice and soaked so she can ride the hard curve of her chin.

She lifts off and reaches for Rose, still shaking when she pulls her in and starts to lick her face clean, too in love with the way Rose is smiling, with the way she kisses like they learned on each other’s mouths. There’s suddenly a hard, overheated body behind her, and she realizes she’s lying prone back on Jason with Rose straddling them both, her little legs too short for her knees to reach the bed.

Jason’s cock juts up from between Adrianne’s legs, and she squeezes her thighs together around it, hugging it up against her still pulsing cunt just so it looks and feels, just for a second, like it belongs to her.

She eases Rose back so they can both look down between Adrianne’s legs, so they can both see the dick hard and waiting there, ready for them to use. 

“It’s okay,” Adrianne tells her, running a hand up Rose’s thigh while she reaches up to squeeze at her tits and grip at her tiny stomach, her beautiful, beautiful girl. “We’ll go slow.”

Jason’s hands are on Adrianne’s hips, keeping her on top of him and steady, and the calm drum of his heart against her back is strangely reassuring, keeping her tethered to the bed, to this moment. She helps Rose lift up, spreads her legs a little so Rose can get a good grip at Jason’s dick, and she can hear the sharp intake of Jason’s breath when Rose starts to rub it against her pussy, against all the syrupy-slick folds, against her precious clit, and Adrianne is so fucking jealous of him that she forgets to breathe for a second.

“Sit on my dick,” Adrianne whispers, running a hand up Rose’s waist and back down to squeeze her hip, guiding her where she wants her. The head of Jason’s cock catches and starts to spread Rose’s pussy, and she doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink as she watches the heft of it disappear inside of her girl’s body.

Rose shudders after only a few inches, her hands flying down to rest on Adrianne’s stomach, trying to steady herself. She whines, soft and urgent, her face flushed hot.

“Good girl,” Adri tells her, sliding her hand down to Rose’s cunt to thumb at her clit, distracting her from the probably painful stretch because Jason is fucking huge. “Feel so fucking good, Rosey.”

“Annie,” she sighs, curling down over Adrianne, all her hair falling down around her shoulders and surrounding them both, trapping them in a salt and sun-scented home of RoseRoseRose. She doesn’t care where Jason’s face is, doesn’t care if he’s uncomfortable. She leans up and catches Rose’s mouth, her other hand sliding around to grip Rose’s ass as she works on her clit and lets Rose move at her own pace on Jason’s dick.

Rose hisses as she relaxes a little more and Jason slips deeper inside of her, most of his cock now completely buried in Rose’s perfect cunt, held inside of a place Adrianne would commit murder to feel around her, like he is. Multiple murders. Give her a fucking list.

“It’s… fuck. I don’t know i-if… it’s so big, Annie,” she mumbles, her back curling in under Adrianne’s hand that is now petting up and down her spine, trying to comfort her even as she’s sickly turned on beyond believe that her little Rose is just too goddamn tight. 

“You can do it,” Adrianne tells her, both her hands moving to Rose’s hips now, holding on tight. “Just breathe for me. Just breathe--”

“Fuck!” Rose sobs when Adrianne and Jason move up like they’re sharing a body, sinking in as deep as they can get and staying there. Rose is now seated on top of Adrianne, their clits pressed hard together, the inch or so of Jason’s dick that’s not inside of Rose pressed deep along the front of Adrianne’s cunt, held against her and yeah, it feels fucking amazing. 

“So fucking beautiful, baby,” Adrianne says, delirious with love and pussy and with closely-held dreams coming true, and she spreads a hand out on Rose’s belly just to feel the deep, secret movement of Jason’s cock bulging inside of her, just to feel how tense Rose gets when she starts to work him around inside, grinding on top of him until she gets it at just the right angle.

“Ohmygod,” she mumbles, sitting up and arching back hard, her tits flushed deep and shuddering as she shakes, her thighs spread wide so she can press her hands on Adrianne’s chest, giving her full weight over so she has the leverage to ride that cock, keeping it buried in deep and fucking herself with it.

“Get that dick, Rosey. God, get that fucking dick, you’re so goddamn tight, _fuck_ ,” she groans, squeezing at the side of Rose’s thighs and then at her little ass, hauling her back and forth on the dick now shoving up feverishly between her thighs, rubbing against her own pussy as he ruts into Adrianne’s girl. 

Rose falls quiet, her mouth dropping open as she rocks frantically on top of Adrianne, rubbing their clits together without even realizing it and giving Jason’s cock the ride of its fucking life, and she swears she can feel it when Rose starts to come on it, when it gets extra sloppy and creamy all around it and soaks into Adrianne’s own pussy, and holy fuck, Adrianne comes so hard her vision whites out.

She sobs and collapses down on top of Adrianne, her thighs shuddering against Adrianne’s ribs as she rides it out, neither of them paying attention to the low, muffled sounds Jason is making, to how his fingers are trapped between their pressed bodies so Adrianne doesn’t fall off of him. She kisses Rose’s sweaty face, sucks on her bottom lip and nips at her throat and her hard little nipples and she nearly gasps when Jason hauls them all up and rearranges them, bigger than either Adrianne or Rose, so it’s tragically easy.

“Get her on her belly,” he says softly in Adrianne’s ear, and she obeys because she’s fuck-stupid and desperate to keep using his dick on Rose. She guides Rose down to the warm spot Jason left behind on the bed, easing her down onto her stomach and laying down on top of her when Jason guides her to do so. 

Her belly curves into the deep arch of Rose’s back, her tits pressed flat against it, and Adrianne slides her hands all over Rose’s body, every single place she can touch. She blows cool air along the back of her neck and kisses at her overheated skin while Jason arranges their legs and moves them around to make room for himself, and the sound Rose makes when he pushes his dick back in is fucking delicious.

He wedges a pillow under Rose’s hips, angling her up under Adrianne so he can get in at just the right angle. He spreads Adrianne’s legs wide around Rose’s body and then nudges Rose’s apart between them, all so he can fit himself into the tangle and get back deep inside of Rose’s creamy-tight cunt.

Adrianne kinda loves him.

“So good, beautiful,” Adrianne whispers in her ear while Jason shows off his real talent at fucking behind them, working his dick inside of Rose in circular, deep curls of his hips, pushing in just this-side of hard just to make it a little painful, just like Adrianne would. She reaches down between Rose’s legs and finds her clit, rubbing it with two fingers while Jason fucks her. “Givin’ up this pussy to me so fuckin’ good.”

“Fuck me, Annie,” Rose begs, her face pressed into the pillow, her arms wrapped up tight around it. She sounds like she’s crying. “Fuck me hard, please. Fuck me harder--”

The bed creaks for the first time as Jason grabs Adrianne’s hips and snaps his own forward, pumping away inside of Rose like she’s his wife, like there’s true love happening here. Adrianne digs her knees into the mattress and moves with him, learning how loose and free he has to be with his hips to fuck like this, using the movements of his body and mimicking it with her own. She grinds against Rose’s ass, rutting against her hard, tugging on Rose’s earlobe as she tongues at her ear and growls and huffs there like a fucking dog.

“Gonna let me come inside of you?” she asks her, left hand closing around Rose’s throat, fingers pressing in along the sides to cut off her air as sweetly as she can while Jason’s thrusts get wild and rough. His hands are all over Adrianne’s ass now like they can’t help it, gripping her hard enough to bruise and spreading her out so that he can see the way her pussy works against Rose’s body, so he can see the way her asshole tenses on every drag in.

Rose sucks in a sharp breath under Adrianne’s tightening hand, her clit tensing beneath the frenzied rub of her strong fingers.

“Gonna let me come in this pussy, baby? That means I’m gonna own it forever. You know that, right? You’re gonna be mine, Rosey--”

“C-Come in me,” Rose manages, her whole body shaking under Adrianne’s, straining against her while Jason fucks them both into the mattress, his massive, powerful body burying them together underneath him as he starts to come, somehow trapping any sounds he wants to make in his throat, and so Adrianne doesn’t hear anything when Rose gets her pussy loaded up but the wet squelch of three bodies grinding together, but the sudden, elated sob from Rose as Adrianne lets go of her throat after the initial pulse of her orgasm, but her own strangled, raw-throated cries into the wild tangle of Rose’s hair.

“God I love you Rose I love you I love you I fucking love you,” she breathes, not caring or knowing if the words are lost, not knowing anything but the way Rose feels and smells and sounds and tastes under her, and it goes on forever; the rock of their hips together, Jason staying in deep to let Rose grip and shudder around him, the delirium of being able to touch every fucking inch of Rose while she trembles through the last few aftershocks, and Adrianne knows for sure this time that Rose is barely awake.

There’s a rush of cool air along Adrianne’s back as Jason peels himself off of her, and Rose whimpers softly into the pillow as his cock unearths itself from deep in her now fuck-sloppy pussy. He presses a kiss to Adrianne’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze and leaving the room with barely a sound, the door closing with a soft click behind him.

Adrianne eases the pillow out from under Rose’s hips and lets her relax against the bed, and she keeps a hand on the small of her back as she moves to lay beside her, giving Rose some air and some room to breathe herself.

“You good?” she asks as she strokes Rose’s hair back, gathering it in one hand and tying it up in a lazy bun-knot thing like she’s seen Rose do a thousand times. Rose nods against the pillow, her arms still wrapped around it, and she’s definitely, definitely almost asleep.

Adrianne smiles.

She presses a kiss to her cheek, to the top of her spine, and the whiff she gets of Rose’s pussy makes her hungry again, makes her fucking mouth water.

“I’m almost done, I swear,” she mutters, and the kisses she leaves down Rose’s spine are all apologies. Rose whines but doesn’t move, and whatever she says is slurred and incomprehensible. Adrianne pushes one of Rose’s legs until it bends at the knee, spreading her thighs and wedging herself down at the foot of the bed to get a good look at the work she and Jason did.

Rose is leaking come like a fucking fountain, big, creamy gushes of it dripping out and wetting the crazy tapestry print of the comforter. Adrianne has never, never in her life wanted to know what a dude’s spunk tastes like.

But right now, she’s pretending it’s her own spunk, and her mouth waters with just the fucking thought.

Rose’s asscheeks are soft and whore-loose like she’s drugged, and fuck, it shouldn’t be as much of a turn-on as it is. Adrianne spreads her ass so she can really get in there, and she licks her lips just once before just diving in.

Rose grunts quietly when Adrianne shoves her tongue in and seals her lips around the gape of Rose’s pussy and starts to suck all the come out of it, and it’s truly amazing that Jason had this much jizz left in him after he fucked his brother on the beach this morning. But Adrianne is almost completely sure that Jason isn’t really human, at this point.

She laps into her, greedy and starved, and she drinks down swallow after swallow until Rose is clean and empty and tastes like nothing but Adrianne’s own spit. She licks the bedspread clean too because no one’s here to see how desperate and subby she’s being right now, and while it’s definitely not her favorite taste in the world, she’s sad when there’s nothing left.

Rose is all but snoring when Adrianne moves back up her body, her face slack, her mouth open and slightly drooling on this dude’s pillow, her whole body relaxed into the bed.

She smiles softly, so in love that she feels it like a physical fucking pain. She pulls on her tanktop and her boxer briefs and wanders back out into the livingroom where the TV is now on, low.

Jason is there on the couch, wearing a pair of basketball shorts and rolling a fat joint on top of an ancient-looking family bible on the coffee table. He looks up at her when she comes in, paused in his work.

“How’s she doin’?” he asks.

“Knocked the fuck out,” she replies, collapsing on the couch beside him, legs draping over his lap. She watches him work for awhile, admiring how much attention he gives everything he does, how intently he focuses until the job is fucking done.

Rose’s turned-out little pussy can attest to that.

Jason sits back with his joint and lights it up with a flick of a Grateful Dead bear lighter, taking a long hit before passing it over to Adrianne.

“Your girl’s got an amazing little cunt,” he tells her on an exhale, melting back against the couch, his eyes on the old episode of _The Jeffersons_ playing on the flat screen while Adrianne takes a couple of drags. “It’s been awhile since I wanted to come so fast.”

“I’m in love with her,” Adrianne tells him, passing the joint back, their fingers brushing in a way that’s strangely intimate. He looks over and catches her eyes with a softness that makes Adrianne feel like crying and curling up against his giant chest.

“I know,” he says back, reaching over to stroke her cheek, thumb sliding over the roundest part of it. “You can prolly see it from the fuckin’ moon.”

“She’s in love with my brother. It’s… it’s never been about me. And it never will be. But I can’t help how I feel. I just... “ she sighs, moving in closer to him like she needs to, and he wraps an arm around her, hugs her in tight. “I can’t help it.”

“There’s nothin’ wrong with that,” he tells her, his fingers amazingly nimble as they tuck her hair behind her ear. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, except it’s gonna destroy me one day,” she sighs, letting her eyes fall closed, her leg and her arm draped over Jason’s body like he’s her giant teddy bear.

She realizes that he feels more like her brother than Sawyer ever, ever has.

“Well… I mean. You’re gonna feel what you’re gonna feel. No matter how shitty it is. So. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If it’s inevitable, just… embrace it. Embrace your big fuckin’ heart. And love her as much as she’ll let you. Love her until you don’t have anything left to give her. If it’s the way you’re gonna go, then so be it.”

She feels him shrug, feels it when he takes another long hit. 

She tips her head up, and he’s already leaning down, like a mind-meld. Their mouths part and touch, and she inhales the smoke he exhales, holding it in her lungs while their lips stay together, their noses nuzzling at each other. 

When she exhales again, he kisses her, sliding his tongue into her mouth and tasting himself, licking at the little corners and beneath her tongue until there’s nothing left. She grins as they pull back from each other, and she brings her hand down in a playful slap against his hairy chest.

“How did you know?” she laughs.

Another shrug, and his grin lights up the fucking room.

“Like I said, if I was a chick, I’d totally be you,” he replies, passing her the joint again.

“If you’re ever in Texas, come to Austin. You can crash at my place.” She passes after a toke and wraps around him, snuggling into his sweaty, bare chest. “I think we need to be friends.”

She smiles when she feels his lips come together in a slow, sweet kiss on the top of her head.

“Oh, kid. We’re definitely, definitely gonna be friends.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally done. thank you to every single person who has supported me during this whole story. it means more than i will ever be able to express.

The blur of the biggest morning after of Adrianne’s young life and their goodbyes with the Momoa kids leaves her with a smile on her face as she leans back in the passenger seat while the map flutters between them and Rose heads decidedly east, back home.

Rose is wearing yellow cat eye sunglasses that they found somewhere in San Francisco, so Adrianne can’t see her expression as she stares ahead at the four-lane blacktop. She offers her a drink from their shared bottle of water, and Rose takes it with a bit of a smile, glancing over as she hands it back.

Team Dresch is playing over the speakers, something Adrianne will forever find ironic afterwards.

“Is it okay if… if we go back to the way things were before last night? Just… for the rest of the trip?”

Adrianne processes that, and the easy smile that’s been on her face since she woke up slips away, flies out the window and into the warm California afternoon.

She doesn’t really have words for this.

“It’s just…” Rose continues, licking her lips, those same lips Adrianne sucked on until they turned a deeper pink than she’s ever seen in her whole life. “It’s just a lot for me. I just… I have a lot to think about. You know?”

“Yeah,” Adrianne manages because she’s stronger than she realizes right now. The lid on the bottle tightens under her grip so hard it’ll be nearly impossible to open it again. “I… I get that. Of course. That’s…”

It’s all she can say. Because it hurts. Because it’s not okay. Because she feels the lurch of nausea in her stomach that tells her something’s wrong, something that neither of them are prepared to confront. Now she keeps her eyes straight ahead, too.

“Annie?” Rose says, her voice so soft that Adrianne barely hears her over the wind whipping through their open windows.

“Wake me up when it’s my turn to drive, okay?” Adrianne says like she didn’t hear her. She wedges the bottle between her legs and shifts down in the seat, her head resting against the side of the car, the beautiful trees and clear blue sky dissolving into a watery blur until she closes her eyes under her own sunglasses and pretends to sleep for as long as Rose will let her get away with.

\--

The drive home is a hazy, half-formed dream of flat fields of wheat and corn and cows, and neither of them bring up the fact that they’re not making any detours, not stopping at any of the roadside weirdness they’d planned to see on the way back to Ohio. It’s a race to get there now, a desperation driving them both to drive nearly fifteen hours a day, only stopping to sleep and eat and piss. 

Adrianne’s the one driving when they cross the Ohio state line, and both of them lift their heads to watch the sign greet them as they pass it. 

“Home,” Adrianne mumbles unnecessarily.

Rose doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything back. Adrianne swears she’s ready to throw open the door and launch herself out onto the side of the highway.

Absolutely nothing has changed in the apartment complex when Rose pulls in front of the place Adri shares with her dad, and the realization of it almost makes Adrianne panic.

How can so much have changed, but everything around them seems completely unaffected?

Rose keeps the engine running, and Adrianne looks over at her in surprise.

“I-I’ve gotta get home. It’s Mom’s birthday dinner tonight. I thought I was gonna miss it, but it looks like I’ll be able to--”

“It’s fine,” Adrianne interrupts her. She throws open her door and makes sure to slam it behind her. Only two of the six bags in the trunk are hers, and she’d made sure last night in Kansas that they were all packed up and ready for her to grab. She hefts them up onto her right shoulder and starts toward the stairs.

“Annie!”

Adrianne closes her eyes, every muscle in her body freezing. She turns around because she fucking has to.

Rose is out of the car that’s still running, the place that’s been their home for nearly a month. She can still hear Megadeth playing from the speakers. Adrianne feels this moment, feels it from twenty feet above her own body, feels it from years down the road when she comes back to it on a lonely night and finds that it still hurts, still raw to the touch.

Rose is wearing a red cut-up Op Ivy shirt and jean shorts rolled up to show as much leg as possible, her feet bare on the hot pavement because she never wears shoes when she drives. Her hair is in a loose braid over her shoulder, and Adrianne wonders what it’ll look like the next time they see each other.

“Thank you,” Rose says. Absurdly. Adrianne almost scoffs at her, but she realizes then how close they’re standing, that she can reach out and touch Rose now, if she wanted. And she does, but she won’t. She smells like the cigarette they shared when they crossed into Lucas County, and her soft, bare mouth looks like a goodbye.

Adrianne shrugs a reply because she doesn’t know what to say to that, because she doesn’t have it in her to pretend anymore. She doesn’t know how to wipe the hurt off her face enough to get through this.

Rose pushes her sunglasses up on her head, and Adrianne’s resolve breaks when she sees that Rose’s eyes are bloodshot and puffy, that tears are starting to fall from them and spill down her summer-warmed cheeks.

“A-Annie--”

Adrianne kisses her, kisses her like she hasn’t since that night at Jason’s, kisses her like she’s hers. She grips Rose’s tiny waist and crowds into her space, pushing her tongue into her mouth and claiming her there, too. Rose’s hands slide feverishly across Adrianne’s stomach and around to her back, not stopping until she wraps her arms around Adrianne’s waist and clings to her when they break apart, hugging as tight as they did when Rose used to go away to rich kid summer camp, and Adrianne was stuck at home.

She doesn’t dare take her own sunglasses off. Can’t let Rose see the wreck she is.

She drops a kiss to Rose’s forehead, keeping her lips there like a blessing for a few seconds. They pull back from each other, and Rose’s hands slide off of Adrianne’s body like she’s being torn away.

“I’ll call you,” Rose says, forcing a smile onto her face that doesn’t even try to pass at genuine. “I just… I just need some time. Okay?”

Adrianne feels a curl of hope that she tries desperately to smother. She gives a nod as she takes a few steps back toward the building.

“Tell your mom happy birthday for me,” she replies, feeling safe and lost all at once the second her hand lands on the familiar iron railing.

Rose nods, and they stare at each other for another little while, an indulgent amount of time that seems to end like a broken spell. Rose turns to go back to the car, and Adrianne takes advantage of her turned back to rush up the stairs, keys fumbling in her hand, eyes brimming with tears behind dark sunglasses.

She doesn’t hear the retreat of that loud engine until she’s in her room, bags on the floor, sprawled on her bed and staring up at her ceiling. Dad’s at work, and deaf old Big Mike hadn’t even heard her come home.

She tosses her sunglasses on the nightstand and rubs her eyes, fighting with the jumble of emotions burning at the back of her throat. She falls asleep somewhere in her replay of the entire trip, and she doesn’t wake up until noon the next day.

\--

A week goes by without a word from Rose, and Adrianne acts like she doesn’t notice. Kayla and Trish are still in town, and Adrianne follows them around to shows and diners and smoke-hazed basements, staying mostly quiet and ignoring the eye of every pretty girl who tries to get her attention, her phone turned up as loud as it’ll go in her pocket the whole time.

The call comes on a Sunday evening. Adrianne will later find it appropriately ironic that she’s on the roof of her building with a nice fat joint pinched between her fingers.

She glances at the screen after the ringtone shatters the cityscaped quiet, and she very seriously contemplates not answering it.

But she’s always answered Rose. Even when they had their first huge fight in the fifth grade and didn’t speak for nearly two weeks. Rose had been the first to reach out, and Adrianne had answered the door and taken the trembling little bundle of girl into her arms.

“Hello?” she says, feet propped up on the ledge, head pillowed on her arm. She wonders if she’ll spend the night between Rose’s legs. If she’ll have a bellyful of licked-out girljizz by midnight, and if they’ll make it official finally.

She knows right that fucking second that she’s too high.

“Hey, Annie,” Rose says without her usual energy. Adrianne absently puts out the joint and sets it aside as she tries to place the emotion in Rose’s voice.

“Hey, what’s up?” 

Sitting up is a little dizzying, but leaning back against the solid wall helps calm her a bit, the cool of the brick seeping through her tanktop and into her skin. She feels braced now.

“Oh, you know. Listen, um. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I know I said I would. It’s just been kinda crazy around here since I got back.”

“Is your dad okay?” Adrianne asks, sitting up straighter, hand tightening on the phone.

“Oh, yeah, Daddy’s fine. It’s not… it’s nothing like that.” There’s a pause that gives Adrianne more time to worry, to dig around in her hazy, expanded mind for a word, a name for the emotion she’s hearing. She comes back into herself and realizes that there’s a strange, muffled sound from Rose’s end, one that makes all the hair on her arms stand up.

Rose is crying.

“What’s wrong, Rosey? Tell me. I’m here no matter--”

“I just… I swore to myself I wouldn’t lie to you anymore. Not after… not after everything. I did it for too long, and I hurt you. A-And I know it seems like that’s all I do, or like I _want_ to hurt you or something, but I don’t. God, Annie, I… I’ve never wanted to hurt you. Not ever. You mean so much to me. You know that, don’t you? You have to know that.”

“Rose,” Adrianne says as evenly as she can, feeling stone sober now. Her heart is a loud, wet thump in her ears. “Just say it. Whatever it is.”

“I’m back with Sawyer,” Rose blurts out, and it sounds like a sob, like something breaking free. Adrianne doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. “It’s… I know it doesn’t make any sense to you, because you didn’t know about it for so long. But we’ve been through a lot together, and he loves me, Annie. He really loves me, and we’re gonna--”

“I’ve gotta go,” Adrianne mumbles, her thumb finding the end call button before she drops it to the ground. She closes her eyes and feels the strange pulse of the world all around her, like her breaking, racing heart is everywhere, is closing in, cornering her. 

She doesn’t move for the longest time, and night sets in around her, darkens the world until it’s nothing but dots of street lights and distant windows and the faded stars overhead. She knows she needs to process this, needs to let it sink in, to really, truly hit her once and for all, but she can’t manage it. Not now. Not tonight.

Her legs tingle with sleep when she makes it to her feet, and she tucks the joint back into her thumbed-soft copy of _Just Kids_ and her phone back into her pocket before starting the long trek back down to the 4th floor.

Dad’s asleep with Big Mike at his feet, and Adrianne doesn’t have it in her to wake him up. The boxes she’d planned on using at the end of July to pack up her life are stacked up in front of her closet, packing tape on her desk.

She closes the door, flicks on the overhead light, and rummages through her stacks of CDs until she finds _Earth A.D._ Danzig’s voice screams after the heavy thump of the opening drums, and Adrianne takes a deep breath, forcing every last bit of need to have a fucking breakdown out of her system. She grabs the first box and the roll of packing tape and clears off her bed so she has a surface to work on.

She has shit to do now.

\--

She wakes up around nine the next morning after a couple of hours of sleep, surrounded by packed and labeled boxes and with her dad standing in the door to her room, looking as sad and tired as she feels.

“Hey,” she croaks, forcing herself to sit up. She wipes hard at her eyes and fumbles for the nearly empty bottle of water on her nightstand. 

“Made breakfast,” he says, nodding back toward their little kitchen where Adri can smell her dad’s magical biscuits and gravy waiting for her. Her stomach growls viciously. “Sawyer called this morning.”

He stops there, knows her well enough to do so. She catches his eyes and lets him see all the pain in her own before she locks it up again, forcing it down to deal with later. She sucks in a breath to reply, but he beats her to it.

“Go ahead and eat. I’m gonna head over to Carl’s. He’s got a trailer you can borrow. We’ll worry about getting it back up here later. You wanting to leave today?”

Adrianne nods, her throat tight. She doesn’t miss the red rims of Dad’s eyes. 

“Okay, girlie,” he says softly, thumping his hand on the doorframe just once with a faint smile. “I’ll take care of it. Just go ahead and get ready. And… please take a shower. For the love of Christ.”

Adrianne grins.

“Asshole,” she shoots back.

He grins, just a flash, and then he’s gone, keys rattling, the door closing quietly behind him. She looks around her room and forces herself to acknowledge that this is the last time she’s going to wake up here.

She just can’t stay in Ohio one more fucking day.

\--

She’s on the road by one, a tearful goodbye with Dad and Big Mike the only one Ohio gets from her. Thirteen hundred miles and five states separate her from her new life, and she makes the journey in two days in her Rose-repaired Accord that has 263,000 miles on it now and is nearly as old as she is, but they both somehow manage to make it to Austin in one piece.

She pulls up to the trashy splendor of Rach and Tal’s little house in Austin at 10am on Wednesday morning and only realizes then that she completely forgot to call them and tell them she was coming a couple of months early.

The couch on the porch has some soft blankets on it and a fat orange cat sleeping right in the middle of it, and Adrianne can’t help but feel a little ache of homesickness as she climbs the creaky steps and knocks on the door.

She wonders if anywhere besides Toledo will ever feel like home again.

“Em, I told you to wait until fuckin’ noon, woman!” comes Rach’s voice from inside the house, and Adrianne grins in spite of herself. The door opens, and Adrianne finds herself staring at Rachel through a dusty screen door.

“Hey,” Adrianne says casually.

“Well, holy fucking shit,” Rachel replies.

“Is it…” Rachel scrubs at her face, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers with her tits hanging free, and she looks behind her into the house a couple of times before squinting at Adrianne again. “Like. Did I fuckin’ sleep til August or--”

“I couldn’t stay there anymore,” she says, leaving details for later when Tal pulls out the Arak and Sprite. Rach pushes open the screen door with a loud creak, stepping aside to let Adrianne in. She’s wrapped up in a hug the second she gets in the house, and Adrianne stays very still for a few beats, letting the shock of suddenly having comfort pass before she throws her arms around Rach’s neck. They’re almost exactly the same height, and the familiarity of Rachel’s smell and strength and voice make Adrianne hold onto her desperately.

“It’s okay, babe,” Rachel tells her softly, cupping the back of her head, giving her one last squeeze before letting her go. “Your room’s all ready for you. C’mon. We’ll get everything unloaded later. You hungry?”

“I just need a shower and a breakfast burrito and like two hours behind my fucking drums,” Adrianne tells her, dropping her keys on the scratched-up but clean coffee table and kicking off her smelly Vans. 

“Adriiiiiiii!” comes an accented voice from the hallway, and Tal is suddenly there, a tiny force even shorter than Rose wrapped around her. Adrianne laughs and hugs her back, very quietly amazed that this girl has managed to tame Rachel down into a domestic little life. “Ohmygod what are you doing here I didn’t know you were coming did we know she was coming? Shit, I have to wash your sheets and get my clothes out of that closet and where’s all your stuff? Did you pack it up in your car or did you hire a moving van? Do we need to move the truck or did you park--”

“She’s had coffee,” Rachel explains, prying Tal off of Adrianne and guiding her toward the kitchen. “T, just make some more coffee, will you? We’ll figure everything else out later.”

Tal hurries into the kitchen and Rachel rolls her eyes at Adrianne with the biggest grin Adri’s ever seen.

“Women, am I right?” Rachel says, leading Adrianne through the house and toward the white-walled, bright room with a twin bed and a dresser and a breakfast tray for a nightstand. “We’re gonna have to find you a bigger bed. I know you’re gonna have girls over, and that little piss-ant thing won’t even hold you--”

“It’s fine,” Adrianne tells her with a dismissive shake of her head. “It’s perfect. Promise.”

Rachel studies her for a beat out of the corner of her eyes.

“Well… bathroom’s here,” she says, flicking on the light in the room between the two bedrooms. “Towels are in the closet in there. Use whatever you want in the shower. Extra toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet for... overnight guests.”

“Slut,” Adrianne says dutifully as she tugs her black wifebeater over her head and fights her way out of the sports bra beneath.

“Wait ‘til you see the practice space we scored,” Rachel says, her eyes bright when Adrianne looks back over.

“‘We’?” she asks, shoving her jeans down without unbuttoning them, not caring if Rachel watches the whole thing with pervy relish. 

“Em and Valerie. You’ll love ‘em, kid. Promise. I’ll go call ‘em both right now. I’ll bring you some of my clothes until we get you unpacked.” 

“Rach?” Adrianne says when Rachel’s almost got the door closed behind her. She peeks back in at Adrianne, her short hair still messed up from sleep and sex. She raises her eyebrows at Adrianne who gives her a small smile and a shrug, embarrassed now. “Just… thanks. For everything.”

“Bros before hoes,” Rachel replies, shoving her fist back through the crack in the door for Adrianne to bump with her own. “Hurry up! We gotta get you behind your drums. They’ve missed you.”

The water is so scalding hot that it feels like it’s stripping off the first layer of her skin, a concept that Adrianne welcomes gratefully. She dries off after scrubbing every inch of her body clean, and the brush on the counter does nothing to get through the mass of her blonde hair without the detangler she has packed away in some box in the trailer.

“Rach?” she calls out.

“Yeh?”

Rachel opens the door a few seconds later and raises her eyebrows at Adrianne, dressed now in a Piggy Wiggly shirt and basketball shorts. 

“Do you remember when you got me to shave your head a couple of years ago?” she turns to meet her eyes, dropping the brush back down on the sink. Rach squints at her.

“...Yeh?”

“Can you return the favor?”

Rachel’s eyes round out like a cartoon.

“Like… right now?”

“Right fucking now,” Adrianne replies.

“Tal!” Rachel yells through the house. “Will you bring me a chair?”

“What are you weirdos doing?!” Tall calls back.

“Sex stuff!” Adrianne tells her while Rachel rummages through the closet for her clippers. She wipes a hand over the fogged-up mirror to see her reflection, taking one last, good look at the hair so long now it’s past her shoulder blades.

It’s just time.

\--

Three-Legged Sally apparently has gigs lined up before they even all get into a room together, thanks to Rachel’s amazing ability to network and how smoking hot Emily Valiant is. 

Adrianne takes one look at her light brown skin, her thick black hair, and the way she wraps a mic cord around her arms while she’s singing like she needs to constantly be tied up, and she almost comes on the spot.

“No,” Rachel says instantly, invoking that stupid fucking don’t-bang-your-bandmates rule that just makes Adrianne want Emily even more. 

Valerie’s a cute, thick girl with black Buddy Holly glasses and faded purple hair cut into a pageboy, and her bass guitar is a hot pink thing wrapped around her body like an extra appendage. Her full cheeks match her bass when she reaches out to shake Adrianne’s hand for the first time.

“You’re going to UT in the fall, right?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Adrianne replies, pulling her drumsticks out of her back pocket to fidget with while they talk and to keep from reaching up to touch her newly shaved head.

“Me, too!” Valerie’s a good six inches shorter than the rest of them, but Adrianne can tell she’s got enough personality to make up for it. “We’re so stoked you’re actually here!”

“Sorry!” Emily hangs up her phone and tosses it into the red purse open beside her before she jumps down off the speaker she’d been perched on. “That was my friend that owns the studio in Dripping Springs. I set up some time for us to record some demos next weekend. That’ll give us a few days to practice all together. Anyway. Hey, I’m Em.”

Her smile is a dentist’s wet dream, and Adrianne puts on her best Daddy smirk as they shake hands. Emily laughs when Adrianne doesn’t let go of her hand right away.

“I’m glad you warned me, Rach,” Emily says with a glance over at Rachel who elbows Adri hard in the ribs. 

“Warned you about what?” Adrianne asks, looking between them and trying really hard not to pout.

“That you’re a ladykiller,” Emily replies, vamp red mouth stretching out into another grin as she winks at her. “And I needed to be on my guard when I met you.”

Adrianne raises an eyebrow.

“Are you on your guard?”

Emily’s bottom lip catches on her white teeth as she smiles even bigger.

“Down, girl,” she all but purrs, pushing Adrianne back toward her beloved drum kit. “C’mon, guys. Let’s see what we finally sound like. Let’s run through what we’ve written so far and see what Adrianne can give us.”

Adri straddles her stool and twirls a drumstick in each hand, holding Emily’s sultry gaze until she turns back around. Adrianne realizes right then that she’s gonna have a front seat view of the best ass in all of Texas.

A glance over at Rachel tells Adrianne that she’s has already given up trying to restrain her, and she gives Rachel an exaggerated good girl grin when she shakes her head with a defeated smile.

The best way to get over somebody is to get your tongue inside of somebody else’s pussy.

 

\--

It’s the night before school starts, and Adrianne is spread-legged in her own twin bed, still shaking from coming so hard on Emily’s pierced tongue and she’s frozen in place when Emily pulls something massive and baby blue from the overnight back she’d brought.

They aren’t dating. They just fuck a lot.

“Um,” Adrianne says. “I don’t… that’s not.”

Emily tugs the harness up her gorgeous body and buckles it into place, yanking on the straps until it’s tight around her hips and ass. The dildo swaying between her legs is a good eight inches and not too thick, but Adrianne’s heart is racing like it’s a horse cock.

Emily puts her hands on her hips and raises her perfect black eyebrows.

“Not what?”

“I don’t bottom,” Adrianne says, pushing herself to sit up and lean back against the pillows, her eyes on Emily’s bruise-bitten tits and the Adrianne-sized handprints on her thighs. They’d given up on keeping it a secret from Val and Rach about two weeks in.

“What do you mean, you don’t bottom?” Emily asks, prepping like the conversation has nothing to do with the dick between her legs, the slick sound of lube greasing up the dong making Adrianne shove her legs closed. “Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”

“Holy fuck, _what_?” Adrianne asks, gravely offended. She grabs the bottle of mezcal off the nightstand Emily had brought back from Mexico when she’d visited her family in Oaxaca in the spring and takes a few nervous swigs, letting the smoky taste burn down her throat and calm her nerves. She scrubs a hand over her peach-fuzz scalp.

Emilia Maria Vallante Fernández has her fucking pussy-whipped.

“I’m not a virgin,” she finally defends, slamming the bottle back down and eyeing Emily warily as she slinks back toward the bed. “I’ve fucked so many chicks. Like, you wouldn’t even believe--”

“Has anybody ever been inside you?” Emily crawls onto the bed and wraps her hands around Adrianne’s calves, looking up at her through her lashes as she yanks her back down on the bed and spreads her legs again, all at once.

“I’ve been fingered,” Adrianne replies weakly, not bothering to mention that it’s only happened a few times. She arches when she feels Emily’s long fingers rub at her wet cunt, three of them curling to slip right up inside of her, locking into place right against her g-spot.

Adrianne chokes on a slutty moan, the inside of her cheek bleeding from being bitten so hard.

“Virgin college girl pussy,” Emily croons in that husky voice of hers that makes girls cream at every show they play, and Adrianne blushes at how sopping wet her cunt sounds when Emily starts to fingerfuck her.

“I’m not…” Adrianne’s eyes roll back in her head as a low heat starts to set up inside of her. “T-Technically in college yet--”

The fat, blunt head of Em’s pastel blue dick pushes into her without warning, replacing long, slender fingers and making Adrianne feel like she’s being ripped in half.

“Fuck!” she growls, digging her nails into Emily’s arms as she kicks Adrianne’s legs open wider and bears down on her, their tits rubbing together as she thrusts her way in with slow, practiced little pumps, and Adrianne is halfway to an orgasm and has pained tears in her eyes when Emily bottoms out. She whimpers around Emily’s tongue that’s fucking at her own and loosens her grip on Emily’s arms, sliding her own up around her neck and settling in beneath her, shifting around to try and get comfortable with a dick inside of her.

“How’s it feel?” Em murmurs against her lips, rocking her hips forward to grind in a little deeper, making Adrianne gasp, thin and achy. She squeezes her eyes shut and lets her mouth be kissed while she fights to relax, to loosen up like she always tells girls to do when she’s shoving shit inside their cunts.

“Hurts,” Adri mumbles back, leaning into it when Emily presses their foreheads together and starts to fuck her, drawing her curvy hips back and digging back in as deep as she can before starting the cycle again. Adrianne stays still and lets herself get fucked, too uncomfortable to kiss right now, but she lets Emily suck on her tits and massage the backs of her thighs and say whatever nasty shit about her tight cunt she wants. She grits her teeth and tightens her legs around Emily’s body, their three-hour fuck session making their sweaty, hot skin stick together.

A low buzz interrupts Adrianne’s concentration on loosening up, and before she can open her eyes, an intense vibration settles in right on her clit.

“Oh, god,” she breathes.

“Yeah?” Emily huffs, spreading Adrianne’s legs again and fucking into her harder, her long, straight hair covering Adrianne’s face as Emily chews on one of her nipples and rubs her clit with that magic toy, and Adrianne finds herself rocking up into each thrust, trying to get her in deeper, faster.

“Fuck me,” she finally grits out, annoyed with herself for even saying it, but she’s too far gone to really regret anything that’s happening right now. Her short nails dig into Emily’s fat ass and haul her in hard, and when she comes, it’s the most intense orgasm she’s ever had in her fucking life.

“Goddamn,” she sighs while Emily pumps into her to drag out the shivering convulsions, and she can’t even defend herself when Emily shoves her over onto her stomach and drags her onto her knees by her hips.

“You’re not gettin’ off that easy, puta,” Emily laughs from above her, and Adrianne just barely gets her arms around the pillow before she’s stuffed with dick again, Emily’s gently pointed nails digging into her hips as she hauls her back and starts to pound into her again.

Adrianne buries her face in the pillow to hide her bottom bitch sobs and fumbles around on the bed for the bullet vibrator.

\--

She’s elbow-deep in studying for midterms when she comes home one night and finds an envelope waiting for her on their little kitchen table next to a bag of Krystals. She recognizes the handwriting before she even sees _Rose Winslow_ on the return address. 

She sinks down into a chair and pulls the bag of food closer to her, eyeing the envelope like it’s a snake. She eats four Krystals and washes them down with a giant bottle of water before she’ll even touch it.

It’s thick, definitely more than a couple of pages. She thinks about all the notes she and Rose have written over the years, the simple ones in elementary school and the colorful ones in middle school and the novel-length ones in high school, all confidential and confessional and sacred. Adrianne still has every single one she’s ever gotten from Rose tucked into a Doc Marten 14-eye boot box, even the ones from summer camp and Rose’s trips to Europe with her family. 

She rubs her thumb over her own name written in Rose’s hand, her lifelong love of that girl making it almost instinct to open it right then and there. Instead, she gets up from the table and tosses the bag and bottle in the trash, leaving the letter on the table and disappearing into her room to get ready for bed.

She stares at the ceiling in the dark for a good half hour, knowing she’s wasting precious sleep time on a night where she’s only gonna get four hours, tops. After forty-two minutes pass, she throws the covers back and marches out into the kitchen, glaring down at the envelope as hard as she can.

She snatches it up again and turns it over, her broken heart softening up the tiniest bit when she sees the little red heart sticker covering the center of the flap.

Rose.

She slides a finger under the flap and pulls, only getting about halfway across before she catches herself.

“No,” she growls, grabbing the envelope in both hands and ripping it clean in half, the shock of it only rattling her for a few seconds. She attacks both halves one at a time, tearing and tearing until the pieces are too small to rip anymore, until there’s nothing left but layered confetti with tiny hints of Rose’s handwriting all over it. She gathers it all up in two shaking fists and tosses it in the trash, slamming the lid back down on the can so hard it rattles.

She stringently ignores the tears blurring the journey back to her room and curls up under the covers again, slamming her eyes closed and willing herself to sleep, to forget that there was ever a letter from Rose at all.

There’s a fresh bag in the trash can the next morning, and she’s grateful no one ever brings it up.

\--

She and Val drop out of college on the same day, two weeks into spring semester. A three month gig opening for Finally Punk across the whole West Coast and up into Canada makes the decision easy. Borrowing a van from Em’s cousin and pooling together enough money to put gas in it commits them to the tour, and Three-Legged Sally leaves Austin on Valentine’s Day, headed west in a gas guzzler and feeling like fucking rockstars when they strut out onstage at Low Spirits in Albuquerque. 

It’s her first real taste of what it’s like to tour, how shitty it can be, how bizarre and exhilarating and lonely and addictive. She clings to Rachel at first, sticking right by her side backstage at every venue and at every party, but by the time they hit San Diego, she finds her sea legs enough to spend the night with some local surfer chick with dimple piercings and a platinum cunt.

She vows during the second to last song at the next night’s show that she’ll always find a way to play music, to live her life on the road and behind her drums, that she’ll never be stuck at a fucking desk or being nice to dickheads at a retail job. No matter what.

Even if she has to eat uncooked Ramen and shave her head in the bathroom of an In-N-Out and get attacked by a colony of fire ants because she accidentally pissed on their little ant-crib on the side of the road on the way to Sacramento.

-

She’s getting a free lap dance from an off-the-clock stripper at some college party in Santa Cruz when her phone rings.

“Hello?” she says distractedly, eyeing the residual powder on the stripper’s left tit that Adri had failed to snort. She crooks her finger at the girl and pulls her down to finish it off. 

“Where the hell are you?” comes a vaguely familiar voice, and Adri tips her head back and sniffs a few times before she can focus on it.

“Yeah, I don’t know who this is. Help me out,” she replies, resting a hand on the girl’s thigh and letting her eyes go unfocused on the DDs grazing her face as the girl grinds on her lap.

“Jason? Momoa? Weird dude you met at Point St. George in Cali last year?” He pauses. “I fucked your best friend?”

“Dude,” she sighs, leaning forward to let a nipple graze her mouth to console her for that last bit. “I remember you. You didn’t have to rub it in.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m a little drunk.”

“Well, I’m a little high,” she replies. “And I’ve got a gorgeous rack in front of my face. So--”

“Fuck, I need to party with you.”

“Are you here?” she replies, her eyes flying open. “Like in Cali? Are you in NorCal? Holy fuck, come to the party on campus at UC Santa Cruz! I’m wearing a Body Count shirt and my head’s shaved! I’ll come outside and meet you!”

“Adri,” he laughs, big and sunshiney and adoring. “First of all, there are like a hundred parties on campus. Second, I’m in Iowa. Family time. Just left Cali, actually.”

“Oh,” Adrianne pouts, slumping down in her seat. Diamond, crooks a finger under her chin and draws her attention back up with a soft pink smirk. Adrianne grins and slides a hand down the back of Diamond’s satin shorts. “Well… did you get my email? About… about everything?”

“I did.” He falls quiet, like he really feels the sorrow that Adrianne keeps locked up so tightly. “Sorry I haven’t replied. I’ve been unplugged for awhile. Just gotta do it sometimes. Hey, listen. I was callin’ to see if it’s still cool if I come see you down in Austin sometime?”

She just gets the tip of her finger in Diamond’s asshole when she pauses and gasps excitedly, her pinpoint eyes shining bright up at the girl trying to arch back onto her finger.

“Ohmygod, yes. Of _course_. I won’t be home until May, but--”

“It’ll be after. Promise. Listen, I’ll let you go. Get back to your dancer. I’ll be in touch, okay?”

“Email me back!” she yells into the phone just as a loud song starts up on the speakers behind her.

The line goes dead and Diamond grabs the phone from her hand, tossing it on the couch. She plants both of Adrianne’s hands on her tits and leans down, speaking close enough to be heard over the music.

“You gonna take me upstairs or what?” she asks.

Adrianne grins at the surprised squeak Diamond lets out when she stands up and brings the girl in her arms with her.

 

\---

 

By the time summer rolls around again, Adrianne’s desperate enough that she’s working security at The Yellow Rose part time. Emily dances there on the weekends and got her the job, and Adri thoroughly enjoys throwing guys out for being fucks to the dancers. 

One of her coveted days off, she’s curled up on the couch with Val playing Super Paper Mario when somebody knocks on the door.

“Ughhh,” Adri blarghs, tipping her head back to blink up at Val as adorably as she can which just earns her an eyeroll and a slap on the titty.

“Is that supposed to convince me of something?” Val asks, periwinkle blue dye working its magic on her head under a grocery bag they fashioned into a cap. 

“I’ll make dinner!” Adrianne offers, grinning when Valerie hoists herself up from the couch and lets Adri’s head fall down against the warm cushion.

“We ordered pizza for lunch,” Val calls back as she walks to the door. 

“I’ll reheat it!” Adrianne grabs a pillow to prop her head up and unpauses the game.

“Uh,” Val says when she comes back half a minute later. “It’s some… dude. Says he’s here to see you.”

Adrianne pauses the game again.

“I don’t know any dudes.”

“I asked him who he was. All he said was--”

Adrianne glances behind Val and sees a tall, bulky guy come into focus, his hair in a thick, dreaded ponytail, his tits flashing in the deepest V-neck Adri’s ever seen, and his grin bigger than Adrianne even remembered.

“Jason!” she shrieks, throwing the controller down and launching herself up from the couch, lazy day off be damned. 

“You weren’t kidding about the hair--” Jason starts, but Adrianne throws herself at him; arms around his neck, face buried in the warmth there, and she wishes for the first time ever that she was a little smaller so he could catch her and hold her like she kind of needs him to.

He laughs as he wraps his arms around her and gathers her up, but it dies off when Adrianne clutches at him and doesn’t let him go. He curls down so she doesn’t have to stretch up so much, his arms containing her as much as she ever has been by a single other person.

“It’s okay,” he says softly, and she only realizes then that she’s shaking. “Hey, it’s okay.”

He tries to let her go, but she holds fast, her face burning hot with the embarrassment of how she’s acting.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, forcing herself to let go, to drop back down to her feet and introduce Jason to Val, to put away all her bullshit that she usually keeps so tight under wraps. “Jace, this is Val. Bassist in my band.”

Jason’s eyes light up.

“Fellow bassist? No way.” He holds out his giant fist for her to bump, and she beams at him.

“Okay, hi new best friend.” She scoots over on the couch to make room for both of them, seeming to accept that Jason’s gonna be taking her place as Adrianne’s pillow.

“How long can you stay?” Adrianne asks once they’re all settled in and she’s draped over Jason like he’s comfy and soft as Val and not just made of pure muscle. 

“As long as you want me to,” he replies, his calloused fingers stroking across her velvety-shaved head, and it feels so good that she has goosebumps from the back of her neck all the way down her legs. 

“Okay. Forever, then,” she mumbles, arms around his waist, her eyes slipping closed as she starts to drift.

\--

Momo moves in officially a week later, right after he and Adrianne go in together to buy a queen bed for their tiny, shared room. They curl up together every night like a chaste, married couple, even working out a sock-on-the-door system for the nights when one of them brings somebody home.

The first time they share a girl, Rachel side-eyes her the whole next day.

“So, are you like… bi now?” she asks while Adrianne gasses up the lawnmower and slathers herself in sunscreen.

Adrianne turns to look at her with such barely-contained disgust that Rachel throws up her hands.

“Okay, okay, Jesus. I was just wondering. It’s just kinda… weird. Whatever this thing is with you two.” 

“People don’t call two dudes gay if they share a girl in a threesome,” she replies, tying a red bandana around her head and dropping her thermos of ice water into the seat of the riding mower. 

“Hm,” Rachel says thoughtfully, taking the bottle of sunscreen from Adri and snapping the lid closed. “I guess you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Adrianne replies, climbing up onto the mower and tugging her sunglasses from the top of her head to perch on her nose. “Stop being so close-minded.”

She starts the mower up, but she can still hear Rachel yelling about how she taught Adrianne to fist. She puts her headphones in and starts off on the mower, blissfully ignoring everything and everyone for the simple task of making the yard all pretty. 

And she loves the way the neighbors stare at her on the mower and Jason weeding his very lovingly kept flowers in the little patches of dirt on either side of the porch steps. 

\--

Jason joins a metal band in the fall and moves out to be closer to the rest of the band who all share a place in Pflugerville. Adrianne only has a few weeks to mourn before Three-Legged Sally heads off on a five-city tour on their own for the very first time, and it’s only when they’re stuck in Utica during a freak snowstorm that she really sees how shitty being poor and on your own in the world can be.

Rachel borrows money from her ex-stepmother so they can get a motel room instead of sleeping in the van for a third night in below-freezing temperatures, and they have to cancel the last show in Philly before they drag themselves home to mild Austin, Texas more in debt than they started off.

Emily Valiant quits the band New Year's Day and tells them she’s moving to Mexico City to start a queercore band with three of her cousins. Adrianne feels the loss of their badass lead singer and her most regular piece of grade-A pussy in town, and she spends all of January holed up in Momo’s bedroom in Pflugerville while he’s off on tour, working her way through their drummer’s hidden stash of drugs and writing revoltingly honest songs that she burns in a bonfire on Valentine’s Day before heading back to Austin.

Tal’s the only one home when she gets there, and she makes mint tea for them while Adrianne showers for the first time in two weeks. There’s a pensive look on her face when Adri pads back into the kitchen, wearing one of Jason’s thick wool sweaters made by his grandma and running a hand through the short, shaggy mess of her growing hair.

She stops next to the kitchen table where Tal is perched, a low pang of dread settling in her belly.

“What… why are you looking at me like that?”

“Here, sit down,” Tal tells her, pushing a cup of sugary, steaming mint tea in front of her. Adrianne takes it even though she’s not a tea person, letting the warmth of the cup soak into her palms while she waits Tal out.

“You got something in the mail while you were gone,” she finally says, dropping a fancy, oversized white envelope on the table next to Adrianne’s cup. “I wanted to call you and tell you, but Rach told me not to.”

“What is it?” she mumbles, pushing the tea out of the way and picking up the envelope. Her name and address are written on the front in fancy calligraphy, and the inside of the envelope is shiny gold when she gets it open.

She glances up at Tal then, feeling helpless, like maybe this is the last few moments of blissful ignorance in her life.

“What is it?” she asks again, more desperate this time. Tal is curled up in her chair, a ball of tension, and she can’t do anything but she shake her head and take drag after drag from her Marlboro Ultra Light. 

She gets a grip on the thick paper inside and yanks it out, a small shower of gold and silver confetti falling out and landing on the table.

“Tacky,” she says to herself.

The calligraphy on the front of the card matches the writing on the envelope, but the information on the card has Adrianne curling in on herself.

_The pleasure of your company is requested at the marriage of_

_Rose Blake Winslow_

_to_

_Sawyer Ethan Palicki_

_Saturday, May 17th, 2008_

_At 5 o’clock in the evening  
Rosary Cathedral_

_Toledo, Ohio_

_Reception to follow at_

_Toledo Country Club_

“Ohmygod,” Adrianne breathes, her eyes flying over the page, forcing her to read it over and over and over again. “She’s… she’s really gonna do it.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” Tal says tearfully, wrapping her arms around Adrianne and hugging her as hard as she can. “I wanted to just throw it away or something. Or burn it. I wish you never had to find out. I don’t know how she could do this to you.”

“It’s not about me,” she says with a shrug, her stomach rolling with anxiety, with nauseous dread. She touches the RSVP card, the stamped return envelope. A new address. They must already be living together. “It’s… it’s never been about me.”

“What are you gonna do?” Tal asks, little fingers tucking the short tuft of hair in front of Adrianne’s ear behind it fitfully.

“I dunno,” she replies honestly, tucking everything back into the envelope and pushing it away from her. She picks up her cup of tea again and stares down into it, watching the small bits of leaves float around in the bottom before settling down.

“Do you want me to call Rachel?” she asks.

Adri shakes her head.

“Momo?” Tal guesses.

She nods this time, her throat tight, hands clutching at the cup. It’s the last thing she remembers for three days.

\--

She wakes up in a suffocating grip, and she opens her eyes to see Jason Momoa snoring and drooling on her pillow, his hair a mass of tangled curls pulled back and trailing past his shoulders, his beard wild and bushier than ever. 

She doesn’t know how she got through a single day of life without knowing him.

“Yo,” she says, giving his nipple a gentle twist and smiling faintly when his green eyes snap open.

“Thank fuck, you’re awake. What the hell, girl? Talush told me you’ve just been out of it since the other day. Just layin’ here, staring off. Where’d you go?” His hand spans the whole side of her face, and she sighs sour breath at him, loving him even more when he doesn’t even react.

“Dunno,” is all she can say.

He turns to stretch out on his back, and she tucks against his side, head resting on his broad chest. The sound of his heartbeat is loud and constant, and the slow cycle of his breathing is enough to make her relax again.

They sigh at the same time.

“Are you gonna go?” he asks.

“Only if you go with me,” she replies.

“Course I will,” he says immediately, rubbing the nape of her neck and curling down to kiss the top of her greasy head. “I’ll even wear a top hat.”

She grins, already half asleep again.

“You won’t,” she mumbles.

\--

He totally, totally does.

It’s a huge fucking church, as lavish as any in Europe, or at least it seems to Adri, and she has no problem steering clear of Rose’s family in the hour of arrivals before the actual wedding. Dad is completely in love with Jason, and last night, when he’d had to much to drink, he’d even gone so far as to ask Adrianne why she couldn’t just be a little straight. 

Adrianne sits on the groom’s side even if it pains her to do it. She’d seen her brother briefly just after they’d gotten here, but he’d avoided her eyes and ducked away before she could even react. 

Sitting between her dad and Jason in a snug, Valerie-tailored suit, she’s grateful for both of these big-hearted dudes who love her and the two Xanax floating pleasantly through her system.

Half an hour before the ceremony’s supposed to start, Rose’s dad appears beside their pew.

“Annie,” he says, the nickname pulling Adrianne right back to her childhood. She looks over in spite of herself and sees Mr. Winslow, trying and failing not to notice how thin he is, how little hair he has left. But his smile, as always, is nothing but warm. “Rose wants to see you, if you have a minute.”

Jason’s hand tightens in its grip on hers.

She’d thought maybe she could skate through this whole thing, that the day would be big enough that she’d be overlooked completely, unimportant enough to just slip through the crowd and go back home without having to look either of them in the eye, to give them any false wishes or see her Rose with her own last name in the exact wrong way. 

She already feels sick.

“S-Sure,” she manages, giving Jason’s hand a squeeze before she lets go and stands up. Mr. Winslow is gracious enough not to try and make small talk with her, but he walks close to her and presses a kiss to her cheek when he brings her to a stop in front of a large, white door.

“You were always family,” he says to her, giving her arm a gentle squeeze just above the elbow and disappearing back down the long, quiet corridor dotted with low light. 

It occurs to her then that everything that’s happened has led her here, right here. And maybe there were other paths for her, for her and Rose, maybe this exact moment wasn’t always inevitable, but it feels that way. It’s always felt like she’s been preparing to let Rose go completely, exactly like this.

Her knuckles against the door sound ineffectual, the sound absorbed by thick wood.

“Come in,” comes Rose’s soft voice anyway, and Adrianne can’t do anything but take a deep breath and obey.

The room is disgustingly opulent and beautiful, all white and gold and sunlight, and Rose is there in the middle of it all on a mauve velvet sofa, her virgin white dress so full of tulle that she’s all but drowning in it. The makeup on her face is soft and simple, her hair piled up in some complicated series of braids.

She looks like the white witch that vanquishes all darkness. She looks like the reward at the end of a video game. She looks like happily ever after.

“Hey, Rosey,” she says, soft and awkward and unworthy from the doorway.

She closes the door behind her and crosses the room, and she’s amazed to find tears glimmering like diamonds in Rose’s eyes, hovering just above her perfect makeup.

“Oh, god, don’t cry,” Adrianne says, sitting down on the fucking Baroque coffee table across from her. “I don’t know shit about makeup, so I can’t fix it.”

“You look…” Rose shakes her head with a laugh, tears tumbling down her blushing bride cheeks anyway, her pearl earrings shivering with the movement. “Wow, Annie. You look so amazing. Like… like _you_. You know?”

“I promise that a tailored suit isn’t the most me I can be,” she replies, fighting the strange fit of shyness that comes over her because Rose is looking at her so open, so bare. She reaches up to tug at her short, little boy hair that’s taking its time growing out. “You’re fucking beautiful, Rose. Honest to god fairy princess. Like silver bells would tinkle when you walked, you know?”

Rose smiles and dabs at the corners of her eyes with some heirloom handkerchief with a W embroidered on it, and her eyes don’t leave Adrianne for a second.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she finally says.

Adrianne’s the one who looks away.

“Course I’m here,” she says with a shrug, tugging on her sleeves so none of her tattoos show. “It’s your big day.”

“I was gonna ask you to be my maid of honor. Because… that’s where you belong, you know? By my side. With me every step of the way. But… I didn’t think you’d want to.”

“You’re right,” Adrianne says honestly, glancing up and savoring the flash of hurt on Rose’s beautiful face. “I couldn’t have done it. I’m sorry, but--”

“You don’t have to--”

“--that’s not where I’ve ever wanted to be, on your big day,” Adrianne finishes, the Xanax keeping her from dissolving into a pathetic, messy puddle. “So… I’m glad you still know me well enough. I’m grateful.”

“I’m sorry, Annie,” Rose practically whispers, all pretense gone, everything stripped from her so that even her voice sounds raw. The handkerchief twists and folds in her trembling hands. “For… God. For so many things. I don’t even know where to start.”

Adrianne stays quiet, lets her find the words. She wants to hear them. Finally.

“I think I’ve been spoiled by you,” she starts, tears falling straight from her eyes and soaking into the lace on her dress. “I mean… you’ve been my best friend my whole life. Since I was little. I didn’t know what it was like to have another best friend. I didn’t know that… that best friends don’t act like we did. I didn’t know that it was different with us. That _you_ were different. That I was. I just thought… that’s how best friends were. You know? And when I realized… when I finally did know, it was too late. For both of us.”

Adrianne grits her teeth and stares down at her own empty hands, unknowingly mirroring Rose’s movements.

“I didn’t know you were in love with me, Annie. Not… not in the way that you maybe thought. I didn’t… God. It sounds so stupid now. It just didn’t occur to me? And… I know how awful Sawyer’s been to you. I know. And I know that so much of it is because of me--”

“Don’t you take on his bullshit--”

“I’m just,” Rose cuts back in with a heavy sigh. “I’m just… being honest. He’s a great guy. He really is. He’s so kind and thoughtful and he _listens_ to me, which… guys just don’t do. Like, ever. You’re so lucky you don’t have to deal with that.”

Adrianne rolls her eyes, giving a quiet snort.

“Anyway, I didn’t fall in love with him to hurt you. Or to spite you. I tried so hard not to. And I’m sorry I did. I’m so sorry it was him. I’m so sorry that everything I’ve ever done has caused you pain, Annie. I’ll never be able to undo it. Any of it.”

“Stop, Rosey,” Adrianne whispers, pleading while she can still hold her tears back.

“I wanted to give you what you needed from me. I… I tried to. That night on the roof, I… I thought I could do it. That I could learn to want you, too. And it never worked the way I wanted. I’m just… I’m straight. I’m sorry that I’m straight. I swear to god, Annie, if I was gonna be with any girl in the whole fucking world, it would be you.”

Adrianne closes her eyes and flinches like she’s been punched, her throat working as she tries to swallow.

“That night with Jason, I just… I’m so sorry. I guess I just wanted to give you that. I wanted to _have_ that. With you. I wanted to give you something that you wanted. For once. And I know it wasn’t enough, and… Annie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve never been enough--”

“Rose, you’re _everything_ ,” she breaks in, the words loud after Rose’s rushed whispers, loud in this otherwise empty room. She reaches for her and grabs her small hands, losing them in her own grip. “You’ve always been everything. More than enough. Every single day I had with you was--”

“I’ve never been enough,” Rose repeats firmly, forcing Adrianne to meet her eyes, her tears leaving track after track in her flawless foundation. “Can we please just admit that now? I could never be what you wanted me to be.”

“And I couldn’t be what you needed me to be,” Adrianne replies, her thumbs tucked against Rose’s palms, feeling the thrum of her heartbeat in them. “Just your best friend without all the other bullshit. Without having to worry about all the other fucked up things I brought into it. Without having to worry if every single thing you say or do is hurting me.”

“Right back at you,” Rose whispers with a sigh, slumped forward in the gauzy cloud of her dress, looking so tired and worn down now. Now that Adrianne’s here. 

“I wouldn’t change it,” Adrianne says after a long moment, the sound of people and of an organ being played so quiet, so distant through that door. “Even knowing everything I know right now, I wouldn’t change anything. You being my best friend. The way I feel about you. That night in California. None of it.”

“Would you change today?” Rose asks with a cautiously wry smile, giving Adrianne’s hands a squeeze.

“Yeah,” Adrianne admits. “Yeah, I’d definitely be the one marrying you today. And Sawyer would be sitting in the crowd like everybody else. Like that’s all he is.”

Rose searches her eyes and Adrianne feels every shade of brown, absorbs the warmth and the pain and the helpless guilt. The regret.

“I love you, Annie,” she says simply, her chin trembling. “No matter what. I’ll always love you. You’ll always be the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“Love you, too, Rosey.” 

She presses her forehead against Rose’s and breathes her in, the soft powder and flowers of her, the very last moment when she doesn’t belong to someone else.

They don’t say they’ll call or arrange to meet or offer any half-assed goodbyes, and Adrianne is grateful for the lack of pretense. She turns in the doorway and looks back at her; the little princess waiting to be swept off her feet. A dream bride.

She pulls the door closed behind her and drifts back down the corridor, feeling lighter than she ever has before, but whether it’s a relief or just the feeling of being hollowed out, she never really knows.

 

\---

**2010**

Tal and Rachel are on their honeymoon, and Three-Legged Sally has been officially disbanded for six months when Momo texts Adrianne and invites her to a show at Emo’s where a new friend of his is closing out a tour with his band.

Adrianne’s pretty sure Jason’s courting the guy, trying to entice him to start a newer, prettier band with him, but she doesn’t call him out on it.

She laughs for ten minutes when he tells her they’re called The Bloody Rosebuds, and she ventures dutifully backstage with him and shakes hands with Jeff Morgan, lead singer and the dirtiest, sexual human being Adrianne’s ever fucking met. 

She briefly meets the opening band, a grungy kinda group called Happenstance, and their little blonde lead singer named Erica makes Adrianne wet before she even opens her mouth. The guitarist wanders in from outside, track marks on his arms and bandages around his wrists, his nails painted black with Sharpie, a cigarette dangling from his lip like he had it surgically attached.

“Jared,” he mumbles, shaking her hand and Jason’s hand before wandering off again, heading for a dark hallway where Jeff swears there’s a couch Jared likes to brood on before a show.

Both bands are really fucking good, and the ache Adrianne feels coursing through her the entire show isn’t entirely painful; she misses playing, misses being on the road, misses having a twisted-up, weird little family of her very own.

After a night of soaking wet debauchery, she leaves a very pleased girl sleeping in her new bed in her new apartment and opens up her laptop on the couch with QVC on in the background. She heads to Craigslist and opens the musicians listings, reading each one carefully.

She’s ready to find a new family.


End file.
